Baby Boy

As a composer, David Arnold is a curious beast. He is actually modestly well known in the UK as a pop record producer and arranger, but of course in film music he's the man who made ludicrously over the top orchestral scores popular again. Baby Boy is about as far away from the bombast of Independence Day as one could hope to find. Not a film I know anything about, but appearing to be a black urban drama. Arnold's score is the sort that fills the dramatic voids between pop and rap songs that are available on another album (complete with explicit lyrics), but to that end, Arnold's score often a quite impressive effort.
Although a string orchestra is credited in the liner notes, the basis of the music is, for the most part, electric bass, Hammond organ, kit and electric keyboard. The orchestral elements only appear from time to time during the more obviously dramatic moments. Being filler between songs, the cues are inevitably a little on the short side with many running in the minute or two range, although this isn't a great handicap since the uniform style blends together quite easily. There is a generally relaxed vibe at the beginning, only Jody's Nightmare being a notable exception that actually evokes Jerry Goldsmith's nightmare music from The 'Burbs in the use of a wordless female vocalist. The vocalist, Shirley Caesar, makes a few more appearances in other tracks and always to great effect. The later tracks do get somewhat more dramatic with Jumped moving from a low key beginning to a finale of tortuous strings over bass and drums. This is followed by Rodney Takes the Car, a brief adagio for strings and low synths which is most effective. Melvin Takes the Gun is in a similar style and with the brief Family, makes an effective finale.

Indeed Arnold's mixing of contemporary drum and bass type vibes with more traditional orchestral scoring is quite impressive. It's likely to date as quickly as the similar styled Bond scores, but in this case, there is by far greater subtlety and towards the end it takes a quite impressive dramatic turn. I suspect it won't be to everyone's taste and in fairness, many of the filler cues are just low key R & B style instrumentals which don't do much. However, when it does kick into gear, it is an adept mixture of traditional scoring with a contemporary sound and for that reason is worthy of praise.