Play that funky music Efraym

For my Jewish sisters and brothers out there and even my non-Jewish friends - did you think that the popularity of Jewish musicians peaked at 2 Live Jews (best known for the rap song - Oy it's so humid) and Matisyahu (the very popular Chabad reggae artist)? Well there is a new guy in town (and not Adam Noah Levine, the lead singer from Maroon 5).

It's Efraym Elliott Yamin. The third place finisher from last season's American Idol. First, I heard his new song on the Billboard countdown on Saturday morning while driving to the airport and I decided to download his album last night. So onto my Ipod it went and (even with NBC 4's strong guidance on potential Ipod thefts on the Washington metro) I decided to give Elliott a chance.

People, this album is awesome! This young Bruce Willis look alike (with some recent reconstructive dental work to boot) has a ton of great songs to listen to and it even made me not completely unmotivated to go to work on Monday morning - and frankly that is difficult when all you want to do is play outside on a nice day.

Elliott is a son to an Iraqi Jewish father and a Jewish American (also born just two months ahead of me). Pretty awesome for raising the music strength of the "tribe". I know some of you probably thought we peaked at the Neil Diamond but we didn't - trust me.

So go and log on to Itunes or stop by Borders. Below is the album review from amazon.com - spot on!

"Elliott Yamin's debut is so agreeable and well-executed it may well convert hardened R&B experts--the kind who'd normally distance themselves from a disc with a TV pedigree. With sincerity and a voice that vaults itself to places no talent-show contestant should be able to go, Yamin bares his soul here in a way that would do his hero, Donny Hathaway, proud. Tracks like "Take My Breath Away" and "You Are the One" find him twisting a wrench around love-stained lyrics; "I'm the Man" and "Find A Way" flow with hat-in-hand grace (and, in the case of the latter, a scat worthy of a vintage jazz stage); and opener "Movin' On" immortalizes the season five judges'-table words of Paula Abdul: Ellliott Yamin is "one funky white boy." As he proves with this five-star album, he is also among the most gifted artists ever to a turn a stint on the show into a recording career. --Tammy La Gorce

And now a side note: You didn't think I was going to let this go without a history lesson did you? In biblical times, Baghdad actually had one of the largest Jewish populations - about 1 million inhabitants.