Eli "Paperboy" Reed

Plenty of rappers have hung around the cramped WHPK college-radio studio on the South Side, trying to raise their profiles (the Common versus Kanye on-air battle still circulates around the Internet). Not a lot of soul singers have. However, when Eli Reed was (briefly) an undergrad at the University of Chicago, he made the station his home, spinning rare soul sides, marveling at the floor-to-ceiling collection of forgotten LPs, and drinking in obscure soul, funk and R&B 45s from the collections of the station’s elder crate-digging DJs.

Though the academic life was not for him, Reed has since proven himself a great scholar of dusties, demonstrating a deeper understanding of the songwriting on regional R&B records than that of more successful retro acts from New York and England. On his upcoming major-label debut, Come and Get It, Reed cuts a broad swath of soul. A few songs have a Jackson 5 bubblegum snap to the instrumentation. The Massachusetts native also messes around with smooth vocal group styles, wisely dipping into slicker early-’70s soul instead of limiting himself to the ’60s; unlike most of his peers, he avoids Motown and Stax aping.

Perhaps the gospel stylings of “You Can Run On” are a little much. Okay, it’s cool that you can re-create different subgenres of black music with nuances intact, but this is just showing off. Whether the 26-year-old’s impressive ear pays off in America is yet to be seen. Resuscitating the sounds of songs that didn’t cross over to white radio may not be the best way to score a hit. But with any luck, he’ll be so mainstream they’ll never play his records on WHPK.

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