LOVE UNLIMITED

White, the platinum-selling R&B singer and internationally renowned “guru of love,” brings his satiny style to this rags-to-riches autobiography. Love Unlimited, coauthored by music biographer Eliot (To the Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles, 1998, etc.), is not just another celebrity memoir. Throughout, White sprinkles bits of his wisdom on love (“If you love someone you must not be afraid to tell them, to show them, to lead them to your heart”) and how to be successful with the opposite sex. Much of his “advice,” written as introductions to each chapter, borders on being cheesy. But the way these digressions stay true to White’s sensitive yet macho musical persona saves them from falling over the edge. In fact, the highest compliment that can be paid to the writing approach here is that often you can almost hear White’s deep voice reading the words. However, the core of the narrative is White’s compelling life story. He talks openly about growing up in South Central Los Angeles—being raised almost exclusively by his mother (he and his father reconciled later in life)—his and his brother Darryl’s early “gang-banging” days, and how music saved him from the fate that would one day tragically befall Darryl. On occasion, such as when White writes of how hearing Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now or Never” transformed him while he was in jail, the tale slips into melodrama. Yet White’s insights on music, particularly how he works in the studio, the artists who influenced him, and the importance he places on it (he refers constantly to “Lady Music” as the one true love of his life), are strong compensation for the sporadic forays into soap opera—ish writing. Love Unlimited is not great literature, but it never intended to be. It is, like its author, honest and from the heart. And, more than anything, it is oh-so-smooth.