Dru Hill - Enter the Dru (CD)

All Music Guide

The best of the late-'90s RB crooning quartets ups the musical ante on their sophomore album, lacing the silky-smooth grooves with splashes of street-tough shouts that are meant to antagonize as much as they are to seduce. And for a good deal of Enter the Dru, the formula works. There's a gutsy edge to the songs here (especially the hard-knocking "How Deep Is Your Love") that make onetime peers like Boyz II Men sound like the soulless RB robots they are. Even when they get all warm and cozy with Babyface on the potentially mushy "These Are the Times" (in spite the absurdity of the straight-faced line "Tear you up in little pieces/Swallow you like Reese's Pieces"), Dru Hill slice into the section of '90s soul music that crosses bedroom come-ons with classic street savvy (and nervy beats) without sounding at all whipped.

- Michael Gallucci, All Music Guide