Tuskegee

Tuskegee is the tenth and most recent studio album by American singer Lionel Richie. It was released by Mercury Records on March 5, 2012, in the United States. The album consists entirely of reinterpretations of previously released songs by Richie, each performed with a different guest artist, all of which are stars in the country music genre. Tuskegee is named after the Alabama city where Richie was born and later completed his undergraduate degree at Tuskegee Institute. The album became Richie's third number-one album on the Billboard 200 and his first since Dancing on the Ceiling in 1986. Tuskegee also became Richie's first album to sell more than a million copies in the United States since Dancing on the Ceiling. Critical reception At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, Tuskegee has an average score of 74 based on 8 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews." Boston Globe critic Sarah Rodman called Tuskegee an "enjoyably sunny new album," writing that "while it would be easy to dismiss this as calculated – which it is – Richie and his guests are having such a good time and the songs themselves are so irresistible it’s easy (like a Sunday morning) to get caught up in the spirit." Nate Chinen called Tuskegee a "sleek, sure-footed new country duets album." He wrote that "Richie sounds terrific: easeful and soulful, if no longer exactly youthful. The characteristic smoothness of his delivery makes him both an approachable partner and a malleable backup singer."