John Legend’s new album might just be parallel with Legend’s reality.

With his impending marriage to model Chrissy Teigen, later this month, it seems that Legend has found a new inspiration for his music, and thus brings us his fourth studio album “Love in the Future.” 

As opposed to his previous album “Evolver,” which featured more of an experimental R&B feeling, Legend seems to return back to his original sound of soul.

While the songs on the album might not be the most exciting, his tracks deliver a sound that could almost be called beautiful.  With the combination of piano and drums throughout the majority of the album, it’s a recipe that Legend can’t go wrong with.

In the title song “Love in the Future (Intro),” Legends sets the mood, telling his listeners, “It’s a new year for love, love in the future, not the love I lost.”  This message carries throughout his track list, and it is only when he abandons this motto that his songs lose a bit of their Legend-esque traits.

Perhaps the album only truly falters in “Who Do We Think We Are” featuring Rick Ross.  While Legend shines with his baritone croons over the distorted guitars and continuous harmonies, his lyrics proclaiming, “We can’t run out of music / It’s the only way we know,” Ross seems to fall flat in comparison.  Ross’s grunts of “pink champagne” and “trees that I inhale” just don’t seem to fit in with the mood that Legend so meticulously created in the track.

However, whatever missteps Legend may make he redeems himself with “All of Me.”  By telling his listeners “you’re my end and my beginning,” you can hear the sincerity behind his voice, almost as if he is singing to his bride-to-be and not into a microphone.

While this album might not be the most adventurous, it is Legend’s genuine emotions that fuel the album and makes it endearing.

Listeners can almost see the progression Legend has made throughout his career with this album, as opposed to other R&B singers of the day who seem to stumble over the idea of love.

It seems as if Legend has realized that the real meaning of love lives within stability, a stability that he delivers in the majority of “Love in the Future”’s tracks.