Lloyd’s junior effort, Lessons in Love, kicks off with the loose drum break, squelchy sex guitar and porn-synth combo of the aptly-titled “Sex Education.” Lyrics like “I’ll start at your heart, then go deeper inside” attempt to paint the pretty-faced, falsetto-voiced, 22-year-old New Orleans native as more of a romantic than lothario, but the bulk of Lessons proves Lloyd is a proud honor student of the R. Kelly school of sleaze. “This one for the radio, oh, oh,” Lloyd announces at the start of “Year of the Lover” (indeed, it’s the album’s second single), a song that’s got a creepy, probably unintentionally comical, cannibalistic undertone: “Don’t make plans for dinner/I’m gonna put you up on the stove/And take off all of your clothes/Girl, watch me cook/Until ya get nice and tender/You ain’t goin’ nowhere/Tonight I’m holdin’ you hostage.” More like “Girrrl, you better run for your life!” Aside from the great lead single “Girls Around the World,” which features Lil Wayne and the loop from Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers’s oft-sampled (particularly in the ’80s and ’90s) “Ashley’s Roachclip,” Lessons is largely comprised of heavy-beated, midtempo ballads—a trend that is, admittedly, preferable to the schmaltzy AC ballads of the ’90s and the drippy baby-makin’ jams of the recent past. Speaking of which, the gross “Have My Baby” finds Lloyd speciously instructing, “If you wanna have my baby/Here is what you do: Take your clothes off.” Score one for proponents of teaching sex ed in school.
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