The Beatbox: Ginuwine

There’s a fantastically phallic billboard in the heart of Westport. The advertisment, which features a cartoonish rendering of a red rocket, reads “Harrah’s VooDoo Lounge: Re-Launched.” It would be an apt tagline for R&B singer Ginuwine, who performs at the VooDoo Lounge Sunday in support of A Man’s Thoughts, his first new album in nearly four years. Rocketed to fame by his Timbaland-produced hit single, “Pony,” in the mid-’90s, Ginuwine hasn’t done much noteworthy up until now. Regarded as much for his voice as his chiseled D’Angelo-like physique, Ginuwine has lived, in recent years, in pseudo-retirement from the popular and R&B music scenes. The singer’s connection to Kansas City, it turns out, is more than mere promotion. To the chagrin of his female fans, Ginuwine is married to Solé, an R&B singer and native of Kansas City, Missouri. His upcoming appearance presents an excellent opportunity for the city’s women to toss aside their disappointment and relive, if only momentarily, their teenage fantasies of galloping with the wide-eyed R&B cowboy.