So we come back around, full circle, to the kid. He’s a little more timid and chivalrous. He must have learned some lessons while we were gone, even if he still wants the girl as much as ever. It’s just that this is the first glimpse we get of “wants” acting the verb beyond an automatic, animal reaction. Maybe now that lust’s thirst has been slaked, there’s a bit of room for that other L word. No, Mike, not lesbians.

Dre and Vidal’s synthetic flutes and keys have a gauzy, viscous quality not unlike the best of Foreign Exchange’s A-sides, yet their music trumps Nicolay by finding the proper voice and theme to gel around, as opposed to washing out from beneath the rapping of a Little Brother emcee. The chopping-block drums are complemented by small cymbal-crash fills applied in strategic places, and the dimmed-light mood is set, fallen streamers scuffed to pieces a long time ago.

Flaws in some ways, Chris Brown’s unsteady performance and thin tenor work mostly in his favor on “Yo,” if only due to those qualities giving the polished swoon-song a very palpable vulnerability. One can almost hear the feet shuffle beneath Brown’s supplications: “I know you’re trying to leave / But, excuse me, miss, I saved the last dance for you.” The second verse clarifies that this is not the girl(s) that had Chris making a mess of himself earlier; the lady says that she doesn’t really dance (in double entendre “Run It!” speak, she’s not one for balling). Brown’s attempts to ease her come across sincere, docile and simply desirous of her presence. This is a real “aww” song.

Not long ago there’d have been little remarkable about a gentlemanly and strongly executed slow stepper like “Yo.” In today’s glutted market of shit-faced twitch-hop, dirty whisper-rap and pelvic jazzercise, however, Brown’s follow-up single is refreshing. It bears the humility and emotional weight of a minor reformation, surely something needed in the hedonistic wake of “Run It!” Compatriots like Ne-Yo’s “So Sick” can’t compare, lacking the finesse of the key work on “Yo (Excuse Me Miss)” as well as the sharpness of the vocal multi-tracking and the held-breath effect of the nearly inert breakdown. So, wet-eared Brown and his producers have delivered the first great R&B single of the year, and they did it by making allowance for old-fashioned romanticism in the calmer, quieter moments between party sets.

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