Say You Love Me

“Say You Love Me” closes out Truth Inc.’s only album on the same intimate, in-house note the whole record was built on: every song was written and produced by keyboardist Jon Nettlesbey and Terry Coffey through their own Mercenary Productions, with Horace “Bokie” Coleman, Dean Pleasants and Robert “Baba K” Burns II filling out the band and Derald Conway and Jimmy Demers sharing lead vocals across the album.

It’s the most direct echo of the group’s roots on the record: two years earlier, Nettlesbey, Coffey and Coleman were the engine behind Howard Hewett’s “Show Me”, a Number 2 R&B hit built on the same writing-and-rhythm partnership heard here. If “Show Me” is your speed, “Say You Love Me” is the sound of its writers stepping fully out from behind an established star to make a record entirely their own.