If anyone has wack juice squirted all over him right now, it’s Robin Thicke. Dude has seen her career go from “boom” to “bust” in barely two years. Is it fair? Not really. Robin’s a talented cat who had the misfortune of a) blowing up with a song that people may have misinterpreted lyrically, b) got singled out for that same lyrical content when artists with similar lyrics got a pass (go listen to Miguel’s “How Many Drinks”), c) capitalizing on his big moment in kind of dumb ways (the awful VMA performance with Miley Cyrus, the sellout rush-job Blurred Lines album) and d) offered up some pretty damning testimony in the copyright infringement lawsuit brought against him and Pharrell Williams by Marvin Gaye’s succubi offspring. As far as the situation with him and his (now-ex) wife? Well, first off it’s none of my business. The public pleas to save his marriage (combined with a truly horrendous album-form mea culpa) seemed a little desperate, but none of this-individually or collectively-was enough for me to completely abandon my appreciation for a cat that I’ve been championing ever since I heard “When I Get You Alone” on my Discman radio thirteen years ago.
After the two years Robin has had, I wouldn’t blame him for finding the nearest hole to crawl into. To the man’s credit, he keeps showing his face (most recently on last weekend’s BET Awards) and making music. “Morning Sun” dropped today, and it’s presumably the first single from an upcoming album. It’s a pleasant enough song, light and breezy. It won’t change the world…hell, it probably won’t even be a hit. But it’s good enough to get me interested in what else Robin may have up his sleeve. Two more things become apparent from checking out the song and the lyric video: 1) Robin’s Marvin influence is still quite transparent (which makes him no different from…say…El DeBarge or Jermaine Jackson) and 2) dude’s still pretty fascinated by his own junk, even in animated form.