Shine Through It is American actor Terrence Howard's debut studio album, released by Sony Music on September 2, 2008. All tracks were written by Howard, four of which were co-written by Miles Mosley, and one by Ilsey Juber. Howard and Mosley also produced the album and played many of the instruments on it. Critical reception of the album was middling, with critics agreeing that similar material had been handled better by Terence Trent D'Arby, while commercially, the album charted in the top 40 of the Billboard 200 and the top ten of Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.

Style and reception

AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine said the album "can frequently be maddening" but found it "undeniably interesting, at once a quintessential oddity and a strangely promising debut". Summarizing the album's sound as "grandly, absurdly ambitious, symphonic folk-soul", Erlewine emphasized its "juxtapositions of folk, bossa nova, jazz, and soul" which "seem as accidental as they are intentional", and said that "ambition is not Howard's problem – if anything, he has too much of it – but execution is". PopMatters's Quentin B. Huff also called the album "ambitious", noting that "no two songs sound alike, although strings, guitars, and tempo changes seem to be staples in Terrence Howard's bag of music tricks." Huff criticized Howard's vocals as "the album's least compelling aspect", where his middle range is "sometimes scratchy, shakes and sounds distractingly unsteady." Both critics agreed that the album was reminiscent of, and would've been in better hands with, Terence Trent D'Arby, with Huff concluding that Howard "ends up sounding like a less convincing version of a guy who's famous for doing what he's trying to do now."

Track listing

Personnel

Musicians

Technical

Artwork

Recording locations

Charts