Singer/songwriter Robin Thicke's fourth album is titled Sex Therapy: The Session. (Universal Music Canada)

Robin Thicke is not a licensed sex therapist. But he is a suave dude with a buttery smooth falsetto, which probably makes him a specialist in matters of the heart and regions further south.

'The sex is easy to find, but the therapy comes from caring about somebody and wanting to make their life better.'

— Robin Thicke

Sex Therapy: The Session, the recently released fourth album by the Los Angeles-based musician, is evenly split between club-ready material and subtler slow jams designed for more intimate contexts.

The title track is a great example of the latter, a slinky showcase of Thicke's musical strengths. Though a certain degree of cheesiness accompanies his loverman schtick, the tune is redeemed by its disarming sincerity and Thicke's ability to synthesize a wide range of stylistic influences. Like much of his breakthrough disc, The Evolution of Robin Thicke (2006), and its underrated, retro-'70s followup, Something Else (2008), the song Sex Therapy cops its coolest moves from soul and R&B masters of yesteryear, yet has an eminently modern sheen and feel. No wonder Thicke has typically fared better on urban stations than their Top 40 equivalents. (It helps to have a friend like Lil Wayne.)

"I've realized that I'm just a doer," says the 32-year-old Thicke in a recent interview. "Stevie Wonder to me is Mozart — I look at myself as more like an Andy Warhol. I like to make something interesting out of a can of soup, know what I mean?"

The progeny of Canadian sitcom dad Alan Thicke and singer Gloria Loring — a former songwriting team in their own right — Thicke explains that the song Sex Therapy came to him when he was messing about in the studio with fellow singer Ester Dean and producer Polow Da Don (hitmaker for Fergie, 50 Cent and Chris Brown). Thicke is fond of repurposing elements of beloved songs — classics by Al Green and Marvin Gaye appear in revised forms elsewhere on Sex Therapy: The Session. It's unsurprising, then, to hear that his current hit started to coalesce when Dean began singing "It's my body" to the tune of Lesley Gore's 1963 hit It's My Party.

(Universal Music Canada)

"I said, 'Ooh, that's cool, let's do that.' But we needed another idea, so I said, 'What if we made it like sex therapy?' I was thinking about what a woman needs at the end of the day. How can I take care of her the best? What can I give her that every woman needs?"

That question has stymied songwriters since time immemorial, and Thicke notes that the answers have grown more complex now that so many women "can afford their own shoes, buy their own apartments and pay for their own dinners." But, as he so sagely puts it, "They still need someone to have sex with — everyone needs sex therapy!"

Thicke is fully aware of how silly he may sound. The song's exhortation to follow him because "where we're going, we don't need no bread crumbs" is also a reminder of his limitations as a lyricist. But if there's something that unites Thicke with inspirations like Green and Gaye and Teddy Pendergrass — as well as contemporaries like Ne-Yo and Justin Timberlake — it's a steadfast belief in what he calls "the love factor."

"The sex is easy to find, but the therapy comes from caring about somebody and wanting to make their life better. I think it's good for everybody in that we lose sight of what makes us happy and how to achieve that. Just sitting still on the couch and looking straight ahead at the TV, you forget there is this human life form right next to you who has so much to offer you that the TV cannot. That's all sex therapy. So why don't you guys engage in conversation and laughter instead of bonbons and American Idol?"

That spirit of playfulness and earnestness abounds on Sex Therapy: The Session, which benefits from an impressive slew of guests, including Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg and Estelle. As Thicke demonstrated on Shooter and Tie My Hands, two of his past hookups with Lil Wayne, his supple voice can be a surprisingly effective match with the patter of his superstar-rapper pals. Here, the pairings create a more aggressive attitude. Thicke admits that some of the new songs may cast him as less than the perfect gentleman — the video for Sex Therapy, for example, implies that he lives in a mansion filled with scantily clad models. He claims the would-be strip-club jam Shakin' It 4 Daddy is really intended for his missus, the actress Paula Patton.

"My wife looks amazing in lingerie, so if she comes in and starts shaking it for daddy, trust me, me and her are going to have a swell evening," Thicke says with a salacious chortle.

Thicke performs at the Sex Therapy release party in New York. (Brian Ach/Getty Images)

The past few months have been especially kind to the couple. Not only are they expecting their first child in May but Patton has received accolades for her performance as a teacher in the film Precious, Lee Daniels' drama about a Harlem teen's struggle to escape her abusive home life. It was Thicke who first read the script and urged Patton to do it.

"I knew it was an incredible script," he says. "One of the hardest things to do in movies is to create something that's never been seen before on film and I felt like that about the scene when Precious looks in the mirror and sees a white girl. That alone was so honest, because my wife had told me she had feelings like that when she was younger. Every once in a while, she had thought, 'Would it be easier if I was white?' I think that's a natural thing to do in the environment that America creates racially. It's not necessarily easy subject matter, but sometimes things have to be revealed and discussed. The great thing about a film like that is it creates discussion, and that creates forward movement."

Thicke will soon be trying his own luck in the film business by contributing his vocal talents to Rio, a kiddie-oriented animated movie slated for release in 2011 that will also feature contributions by Anne Hathaway and Neil Patrick Harris.

"I'm starting on the animated side because I'm just going to trust my voice," he says. "I know how to use that well so I'll do that first and I'll learn from my talented wife how not to make a fool of myself. I don't want her to go, 'Oh baby, you shouldn't have done that!'"

Sex Therapy: The Session is out now.

Jason Anderson is a writer based in Toronto.