Who is Mario

Often, young R&B guns go about proclaiming their maturity by slyly tucking a steamy lyric into a late-disc song, say, or busting out a contribution from a rapper with an R-rated reputation. Not so Mario. Right out of the gate on Go, the 20-year-old lets his heretofore virgin-eared listeners have it, deploying the F-bomb repeatedly and with something like fervor. Which is not to say that the song doesn't sound great. In the three years it's taken Mario to get Go going, he's clearly done his share of musical soul-searching. As the track list moves from the sincerity-draped sizzler "Cryin' Out For Me" to the bouncy "Skippin'," shades of Usher and R. Kelly surface, but Mario tempers them with his own calling card, an old-soul perspective. He may be no Alicia Keys, but there's a beauty and believability to songs like the retro-flavored "Right and a Wrong Way" and the autobiographical "Do Right," written for his mother. Whether that helps the demure get right with the seductive "Lay in My Bed" and the unabashedly sexed-up "Let Me Watch," featuring Juelz Santana, remains to be seen. But the faithful should know this: Mario, now a man, has arrived, and his music merits more whirls through the MP3 player than ever. --Tammy La Gorce