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The Review - MUSIC - grooves with CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS
Published: 13 Decemebr 2007

Super Mario hasn’t quite made it to the next level just yet

REVIEW: MARIO
Jazz Café

I MAY as well just come right out and say it: I’m a Mario fan.
With a heroin-addict mum and a history of gangs and drug dealing, Mario Dewar Barrett, 21, hasn’t had an easy life.
However the smooth-bodied Baltimore singer is going all boy-band on his third album Go, released this week – even if it is the first time he’s getting slapped with the old parental warning sticker.
Some big-name collaborations on it – including The Neptunes, Jermaine Dupri and Timbaland – smack of an almighty record-company push.
But Mario is not without previous success, breaking into the charts with his 2002 Biz Markie cover Just A Friend, followed by a worldwide smash Let Me Love You two years later.
But having had a stab at g-funk he now appears firmly settled into a nice glossy line in Michael Jackson-esque 1980s ballads – a theme hammered home at his three-day Jazz Café stint last week.
Not content with covering a lesser Jacko hit, Human Nature, he also insisted on wearing a red leather jacket as he wound and ground his way through the hour-long set.
But things perceptively sagged during newer songs and I wasn’t sure his heart was really in the romancing. There may well have been a line-up of teenage girls at the front, but a few hit singles and a couple of covers a show does not make.
Shame he didn’t drag Luigi or Toad on stage, instead of some hyperventilating girl called Diane.

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