Cover Story: R&B & GOSPEL



This year’s R&B performances spotlight some of the latest acts to sprout up. There’s some great marketing involved with their success, but some raw talent as well.

Philly gal RES (8:30 p.m., Coca-Cola/V103/WB36! Stage) works the rock-inflected neo-soul angle Friday night, before hometown hero Cee-Lo struts his stuff. Avant (7 p.m., Coca-Cola/V103/WB36! Stage) blesses the stage Saturday just as his latest single, “When We’re Making Sweet Love,” is blowing up on the radio. Expect a show full of grinding and sweating, plus lots of theatrical, melismatic tangents.

Also performing Saturday is Sharissa (2 p.m., Coca-Cola/V103/WB36! Stage), Motown’s younger version of Mary J. Blige. After the hype died down from her debut single, “Any Other Day,” so did most of the love for her new album, No Half Steppin’. But her raw and powerful voice promises to rile up the listeners, even if most of them have never heard of her.

City High (2 p.m., Coca-Cola/V103/WB36! Stage), the first act signed to Wyclef Jean’s new label, hits the stage Sunday. Many people compare the group to the Fugees because of its one-woman/two-man composition, but City High’s repertoire of bubbly pop songs is quite different. Music lovers in search of deep lyrical content beware. Teddy Pendergrass wannabe Jaheim (3:15 p.m., Coca-Cola/V103/WB36! Stage) rounds out the crop of new voices popping up on stage this year.

Though City High and Jaheim will be getting down and dirty on the V103 Stage, Sunday also means it’s time for church. To get there without leaving the Music Midtown site, pop into the Civic Center’s Sanyo/Turner South Stage, where Celebration Choir (2:30 p.m.), Deeper Shade of Soul (4 p.m.) and Trinitee 5:7 (5:30 p.m.) spread the good word through sets of traditional and contemporary gospel.??