Jennifer Hudson – Jennifer Hudson

Some American Idol chick.

I don’t watch/or care about any of these talent show programmes, so I’m going to totally ignore this fact for this review, as it should not effect anyone’s opinion of an album. If it does, you’re a snob and a cock.
I’ve also been informed that she acted in some films aimed at stupid women. This does not effect my opinion of this album.

This album is good. It’s not usually the kind of music I’d listen to, but there is a real mix of styles and influences on this album make it very listenable. At the heart this is your basic ‘Woman sings RnB’ album and we all know we’ve heard enough of them in the space of the last 50 years, but this is one of the better ones in recent years. I assume this is down to the long list of renound producers that were involved in the making of this album:
Ne-Yo, Stargate, Jim Beanz, Timbaland, Missy Elliott, T-Pain, Robin Thicke ,Diane Warren, Polow da Don, Brian Kennedy.

I really don’t want to enjoy the album, the genres listed being Pop, RnB and Soul, which shouldn’t be conducive of a successful album. Believe me, there are some god-awful moments on the album, ‘What’s Wrong (Go Away)’ is cringe-worthy bad. Overall though, these moments are forgiven and the album as a whole is very well performed and surprisingly endearing.

There’s a strong hip-hop vibe throughout the album, even in the non hop-hop based tracks and I think that this is what goes most of the way towards this being a good album. We’ve all heard this in male RnB, but it’s so much rarer in RnB from the fairer sex.

I get the feeling that Jennifer is going to be around for a while, and while I don’t know how strong her career is going to be in the UK, it wouldn’t surprise me if we heard a lot from her.

As I say, if you can look past the tracks that make you want to smash your head off the nearest brick wall, there is a lot of enjoyment to be had from this album.

Listen to this album: While wearing big high-heeled boots.

Rating: 76%

Extracts from ‘If this isn’t love’, ‘What’s Wrong (Go Away)’, ‘We Gon Fight’ and ‘And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going’

Spotlight

Chris Brown – Exclusive

Failed attempts to combine styles.

To begin with, the first track comes on and floods me with horrible repetition, bland beats and boring lyrics. Good start, I’m beginning to dread the next 78:17 of this Forever edition of the album. I think it’s called Forever, because that’s how long this album is feels like it takes to finish.

The rest of the album, I can see what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to make R&B less rubbish, by adding some of the more fashionable styles in hip-hop to his music, There’s flavours of every rap, hip-hop and R&B style in there all at once and it just sounds terrible.

It just sounds messy, like they’ve really tried too hard and the strain of doing the album made them really ill, but instead of taking time off, they rushed through it so that they could go to bed.
I really feel physically uncomfortable listening to this album and I really needed to struggle through it.It really wasn’t worth it

Listen to this album: Laying on marbles, it might make it a more comfrtable experience.

Rating:59%

Extracts from ‘Picture Perfect’, ‘Help Me’, ‘Nice’ and ‘Superhuman’

‘Kiss Kiss’