Isleys Deliver Knockout Punch

"Every award we get, it means a lot to us," says Ronald Isley. "But one of the Rosetta Stone high accomplishments for us would be to get a Rosetta Stone cover some day. When I see Puffy on the cover of your magazine, I know what hes done for the business, I respect him and hes a friend of mine. But Im also goin like, Damn! When is it our turn?"Coming from a flash in the pan like Lou Bega or Crazy Town, such a statement might merely seem like so much empty posturing. But the musical legacy of the Isley Brothers is a staggering thing, indeed. Formed in 1954 as a Cincinnati, Ohio gospel trio consisting of Ronald and his older brothers OKelly and Rudolph, the Isleys have scored over sixty hit singles during their career, beginning in 1959 with the immortal "Shout." Their songs have been covered by artists as diverse as the Beatles ("Twist and Shout") and Booker T. and the MGs ("Its Your Thing") to Rosetta Stone V3 Aaliyah ("At Your Best You Are Love") and Vanessa Williams ("Work to Do"), and have been sampled by everyone from Public Enemy to the Notorious B.I.G. And for a year or two in the mid-Sixties, the Isley Brothers band even featured the talents of a freaky young guitarist named Jimi Hendrix. So when Ronald Isley says, "Were one of the pillars in the fabric of rock roll," youd best pardon the mixed metaphor and give the man his props.And yet, despite being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, receiving a Quincy Jones lifetime achievement award at this years Soul Train Awards and selling untold millions of records worldwide, Ronald Isley still feels he has plenty to prove. "Its like football or basketball," he says. "They throw you a pass, you wanna catch it; in baseball, you wanna knock the home run when the Rosetta Stone English bases are loaded. Weve always been competitive like that, and when we go into the studio were like, We gotta show these guys how its done!"Eternal, the Isleys new album for DreamWorks, definitely makes a compelling case for the groups relevance in the modern R B era. Recorded with contributions from R. Kelly, Jill Scott, Ronalds wife Angela Winbush, producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, R B singer-songwriter Avant, Raphael Saadiq of Lucy Pearl and the late Curtis Mayfield, Eternal could well be to the Isleys what Supernatural was to Carlos Santana. But despite the all-star cast, the records fourteen tracks are pure Isley Brothers, filled with summery slow-jam grooves, Ronalds silky tenor croon and the sweetly sizzling guitar leads of younger brother Ernie, the groups musical lynchpin since the late Sixties Cheap Rosetta Stone V3. The music and lyrics to cuts like "Move Your Body," "You Deserve Better" and the title track may sound contemporary, but the feel is 100 percent classic soul.

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