Apologies to Clay and Ruben, but if anybody should have had American Idol 2 on lock it was Kimberley. Kimberley Locke, that is, whose debut cracks the combination to her creamsicle-smooth vocal chops and coughs up a few surprises. Most important--and most often missing from the recorded dabblings of her AI cohorts--is a sense of restraint. K-Lo, as fans call her, doesn't muck up her songs with check-me-out vocal trickery. She opts instead for straight-up, bells-and-whistles-free singing, and with a voice as honest and earthy as hers it pays. She nails R&B-slanted selections like "It's Alright" and "Without You," the all-the-makings-of-a-classic love song performed with Clay (Aiken, who, she reports in these liner notes, she now counts as a close friend). If there's a misstep, it's the production on rocker "Wrong," which is, entirely, an attempt to copy the funky gimmickry of Kelly Clarkson's post AI chart-topper "Miss Independence." That bummer aside, best about One Love is the promise it displays in the songwriting department: Locke claims co-writer credit on the back-to-basics R&B lament "You've Changed," this CD's strongest, most convincingly cool track. --Tammy La Gorce
