Limited Edition (CD - 2003)

Personnel: Smokie Norful (vocals, piano); Pastor Marvin E. Wiley, Pastor Jamal H. Bryant (spoken vocals); Derrick Buckingham (guitar); Rodney East (piano); Jason Tyson (organ); Tony Russell, Donald Alford II (bass); Calvin Rodgers, Tavarus Johnson (drums); Diante Johnson (programming); N'atasha Robinson, Romandis Moore, Lasonya Parrish, Tanya Robinson (background vocals).

Producers: Smokie Norful, Myron Butler, Victor Caldwell, Cedric Caldwell.

Recorded live at Rock Of Ages Baptist Church, Maywood, Illinois; Sound Kitchen, Tone Zone, Sound On Authority, Chicago, Illinois; The Georgia Dome, Atlanta, Georgia in 2003.

Digitally remastered using HDCD technology.

This is an Enhanced CD, which contains regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.

This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.

Personnel: Smokie Norful (piano); Derrick Buckingham (guitar); Rodney East (piano); Calvin Rodgers (drums); Diante Johnson (drum programming); Vernard Burton, Terrence Marshall, Romandis Moore, Carya V. Holmes, Veronica Houston, Gloria Brand (background vocals).

Audio Mixers: Marcelo Pennell; Tommy Sims; Bryan Lenox.

Recording information: Rock Of Ages Baptist Church, Maywood, IL; Sound Kitchen; The Georgia Dome, Atlanta, GA; Tone Zone, Chicago, IL.

Director: Donald Lee Woods.

Editors: Marcelo Pennell; Myron Butler; Smokie Norful.

Photographer: Russ Harrington.

Arrangers: Smokie Norful; Victor Caldwell; Cedric Caldwell.

Well, as the man says, if you're going to listen to this album you'd better be prepared to get your praise on. Smokie Norful is a protege of the legendary Kirk Franklin, and musical arranger to the enormously popular Bishop T.D. Jakes. He follows up his inspiring and successful debut, I NEED YOU NOW, with this equally fresh and uplifting live set, which, in reprising several songs from the previous album, trades their layered, sophisticated production for pure energy and unvarnished musicality.

Songs such as the previously urban R&B-influenced "It's All About You" are transformed into prayer meeting shouters, while "Praise Him" swaps the full-throated gospel choir of the studio set for a new, stripped-down intensity. Formerly string-heavy and ballad-like, in its live incarnation "I Need You Now" becomes a simple piano-accompanied statement of human frailty, carried by Norful's strong yet appealingly simple tenor vocals. There's also a brief Christmas ballad in the form of the ever-reliable "Oh Holy Night," LIMITED EDITION's only studio recording, that spotlights Norful's innate (and welcome) ability to convey warm sentiment without laying it on too thick. minimize