I disagree, Nofi! Cray might be too little raw for a purist like you (and your blues knowledge can run circles around mine), he's a bit like a black Eric Clapton, gentlemen blues so to say. Cray is a black blues guitarist like Denzel Washington is a black actor - they both don't correspond to the "black male" stereotype we all, without being racist, tend to have (and which a genre like Rap reinforces all the time).
But I like Cray's approach. No, it's not animalistic, gritty and you can't hear the plantation just around the corner, but I think it's sincere. Miles Davis wasn't a "black male" either and his music, while intellectually playful and not unemotional, was always a little reserved and not oozing raw emotion.
