Anniversaries: Sex, Love & Pain II by Tank

The R&B General staked his comeback on a sequel nobody asked for—returning to the title that made him, only to prove the magic couldn't be bottled twice and find the water had gone tepid.

Courtesy of R&B Money/Atlantic Records.

If I look tired it’s because I am. I’m deeply saddened and disappoint that “Stronger” will not get a video or the continued promotion it deserves! I’d love to blame @atlanticrecords but that would be a lie! It’s tough for record companies to continue to fund music that people don’t support! I pride myself on giving you real musicianship, real singing, real lyrical content and being true to the music that inspired my very existence. The problem is there aren’t many people left that want to hear it or buy it and if there are they won’t stand up and be noticed! Who am I doing this for? Who am I maintaining this so called integrity for? Not many as u can tell by my first wk sales..lol. The artist that don’t give a fuck sale the most and do the most! Should that be my new route? Maybe I should have been born white then all of my music would go straight to mainstream and pop radio instead of urban ac.. A format that continues to kill the true R&B artist! (Not mad at white artist just to be clear!) What I do know is that i will not continue to be faithful to something or someone that is not being faithful to me. I love you but I have a family. I have a mom and dad just like you. I have goals and dreams just like you. I refuse to work hard for nothing. I look better, sing better, produce better, write better, and perform better than dam near everybody and this is the thanks I get?.. Again I’m not angry I’m just tired.. Please enjoy my last real R&B album “Stronger” cause you’ll never get another one! #letterfromaking

In December 2014, Tank was taking a photo of his worn-out face in the mirror (that’s since been deleted, but we got the caption), typing a frustrated Instagram rant that would be talked about in R&B for days. “If I look tired it’s because I am,” he informed his followers. “I’m deeply saddened and disappointed that Stronger will not get a video or the continued promotion it deserves.” His sixth album had only sold barely over 16,000 copies in the first week, a shock to the stomach for a guy who used to debut at number two on the Billboard 200. “Maybe I should have been born white then all of my music would go straight to mainstream and pop radio instead of urban,” he went on, comparing the ease of Sam Smith and Adele’s crossover to the struggles of Black R&B artists to get airtime on radio stations that seemed to be designed to bury them. “Please enjoy my last real R&B album Stronger ‘cause you'll never get another one!”

He was right since then. The follow-up album to his beloved work came nine years later but it was a failure. Sex, Love & Pain II is a record that shows Tank’s indecisiveness between two conflicting sides of his personality. In a 2015 interview, he said that producer Brandon had given “the 2016 version of R&B music,” and Tank made the album using those tracks. In reality, this meant that trap hi-hats were racing under his voice on “She Wit the Shit,” a song that featured Rich Homie Quan doing the kind of AutoTuned mumbling that Tank has been years vehemently against. Wale comes with the verse on “You Don’t Know” rapping about a woman who is too concerned with insignificant problems to realize the devotion given to her, and the result is quite good—the hook is carried by Tank’s melody while the verses are done by Wale like a relay handoff.

“#BDAY” packs a repeat offender Chris Brown, Sage the Gemini, and Tank protégé Siya onto a track that is heavily inspired by DJ Mustard’s ratchet-pop style, the synths are elastic and persistent, the hook is about undressing at a birthday party that is not really your birthday. The song takes melodic DNA from “Marvin’s Room,” which in turn had taken it from the kind of slow-burning R&B that Tank has been doing since 2001. This is the main issue with Sex, Love & Pain II: Tank trying to follow the trend which in turn was trying to follow him. The man who told VIBE Magazine in 2014 that R&B artists “continued to make adjustments to fit in with people we are nowhere near alike” did his comeback album by making the adjustment himself. He had already accurately diagnosed the illness and then he caught it anyway.

When the collaborations end and the trap beats take a backseat, Tank is still able to deliver powerful vocal performances. The only piano ballad on the album, “Better for You,” is the type of song that could have been written by him in any year of his career, and his vocal is like a man coming through the house he used to live in—every room is familiar, every corner is full of memory. The song “So Cold” is stripped down to just an atmosphere from which Tank’s high register can go against the cold facts of being left. “Already in Love” brings together Shawn Stockman of Boyz II Men and Tank for a duet that seems to be transported from a different time altogether, the voices blending with the accuracy of two people who grew up worshipping the same vocal gods. These instances confirm that Tank has not lost any of his abilities. He is still the same musical instrument—rich in the bass range, capable of great tenderness in the falsetto, and always slightly gospel-tinged with the faintest of rasps with which Blackground Records originally signed him.

However, the album’s arrangement hides these tracks under the layer of front-loaded collaborations aimed at increasing streaming numbers. By the time you get to the ending track “Him Her Them” where finally Tank lets go and reveals the emotional depth that the title suggests, most of the album, which is a feature-heavy tracks and where Tank appears as a guest on his own record, has already been listened to. The controversial “Bishop Cognac” skit, which ends the album on a funny note that references the original Sex, Love & Pain’s interludes, is not received very well—it is a reference to an album that this sequel doesn’t quite compare to.

The R&B scene of the mid-2010s from which Sex, Love & Pain II dropped, had been changed by factors which Tank either couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with. Jhené Aiko had gained an audience with her very light and quiet songs which were usually about smoking weed and meditating. The Weeknd had made the self-destruction theme popular. Tank’s Instagram meltdown happened just a few weeks before D’Angelo’s Black Messiah was released, showing that if an artist is fully committed to their vision, then uncompromising Black music can still get a lot of attention and be an event. Even within Tank’s circle, Tyrese, and Ginuwine were having a hard time with the same identity crisis of mixing different formats—TGT’s Three Kings had been at the top of the charts in 2013, but the group’s chemistry was more indicative of a nostalgia play than a new direction.

The problem with Tank was neither his voice nor his melody. His problem was a structural one. He wanted his songs to be played on the radio but he didn’t like what radio was asking for. He wanted to keep traditional R&B going but kept on inviting rappers to prove that he was still relevant. He wanted Sex, Love & Pain II to be as successful as 2007 but he recorded it for a 2016 audience that had long since moved on to different rituals of intimacy. The album isn’t outright bad. Some songs can be enjoyable for some people. But nothing here sounds like it is needed and Tank—the guy who spent fifteen years showing that he could be one of the best pure vocalists in the genre with whom he should be in the conversation—was worthy of a record that would command attention instead of asking for it.

What Sex, Love & Pain II is telling about Tank is the thing he had already admitted in that very exhausted Instagram post: the irritation of a man who understands his value but cannot get anyone to pay what he is asking for. “I look better, sing better, produce better, write better, and perform better than almost everybody and this is the thanks I get?” he wrote. The brag was not far from the truth. The album that came later is a testament that he still can do all those things. However, it can’t show why anyone should be interested in a world that has stopped giving Tank—the artist who has been sharpening his skills for two decades—who are the most skilled. The follow-up to his victory became another legacy of his being on the margins—not because the music failed to be good, but because the music was not able to solve a problem which was never really about music.