2000 Craig David: Fill Me In

Something of a teen prodigy who was working in the UK garage and R&B scene at age sixteen, David's debut solo single is a tale of slipping around his girlfriend's bedroom behind her parent's back. Racy enough fayre if you're fourteen years old perhaps, and I'm afraid 'Fill Me In' is aimed squarely at that demographic - i.e. an audience considerably younger than myself. David's rapping is slicker than oil on a beach, but just like that beach it's not somewhere I particularly want to go. As a genre primer it's fine, but to my ears it's akin to a metal band riffing about drinking pop and playing kiss chase, a slightness amplified by the plastic sterility that pervades 'Fill Me In's beats; there's a functional coldness about it all that provides a hard to penetrate, reflective surface keeping any warm heart the song might have well away from the surface. And I don't think there is one anyway - David's story is his song, a 'look at me' celebration of his Lothario virility and smarmy charm that can seduce the girl next door at will with bottles of red wine and the keys to his 4x4 - that's the star he really wants the world to see, and his smugness is more annoying than endearing. And I find it very annoying indeed.