In many ways this album represents the current good and bad in pop R&B. The good can be heard in the video I've posted here. Estelle is a solid pop singer, and this song has a great hook and a great beat. When you go to this album you are going to find a lot of solid beats and hooks. And as I said Estelle is a good pop singer, so all of that is a formula for success, right?
Well it would be except for a few problems. First off in the middle of the album it goes completely off the rails with a collection of extremely vulgar songs. They don't fit with the rest of the album at all and are not sexy or clever just simply vulgar. The other problem is that there is no cohesion to the album, it simply feels like a collection of songs that are all over the place. An album is so much stronger when it feels cohesive and there are so few R&B pop albums that achieve this lately.
Following the Rhapsody rating method I give the album 1 out of 5 stars for Just OK. Because the songs are all over the place anyone can find one or two songs to fit a mix tape of some sort or another.
I heard some of those early '90s C&C Music Factory hits the other day, and it was another reminder that I start out being a real jerk about most everything.
ReplyDelete