Keyshia Cole - "Got To Get My Heart Back" (mp3)
When I think of Keyshia Cole now, I think of that line she sings in Diddy's "Last Night" that sums up her entire career so perfectly: "all cried out with nothing to say." So much of her music, particularly the songs she became famous with, is just drama drama drama. And even after the breezy perfection of "Let It Go" (which was probably my favorite concert moment of this past Summer, at Artscape when she performed the song just as it was cresting into radio ubiquity but still sounded fresh), her second album Just Like You is still mostly about that catharsis, that constant attempt to find the most soulful way to say "why you trippin'?" She sings every song the exact same way, the same climactic big note on every song, even the one that could've had a tender/sexy delivery, "Give Me More," gets the big blown out heartbreak treatment.
I would probably talk at length about how baldly Keyshia emulates Mary J., and how she'd probably be better off forging her own identity, and is at her best when she transcends those comparisons instead of courting them, but many people have already summed it up better, particularly four four. Part of the problem is that not only does Keyshia often do warmed-over 90's Mary J., but the Shareefa album did it better (and boy does that new single "Shoulda Let You Go" sound like Darkchild recycling the beats he did for 'Reefa). Mostly, though, I wish Keyshia had followed the lead of "Let It Go" and "Last Night" into an album full of juicy 80's R&B (or at least included the whole 6-minute version of the latter instead of that stingy radio edit). Maybe next album she'll get around to fleshing out that aesthetic. In the meantime, the nods to hip hop are a little awkward: Keyshia's attempt to show some love to the Bay with the Too $hort cameo on "Didn't I Tell You" is well-intentioned, but Short Dog unfortunately sounds completely out of place on an expensive-sounding Runners beat, awkward in all the ways he somehow avoided on his other recent big time R&B guest spot, Kelis's "Bossy."
Initially, I was pretty underwhelmed by the album, and had it pegged as the same situation as that Kelly Rowland album: the one great single right up front, and then a steep slide downhill from there. But it's really grown on me, though, particularly "Losing You," and "Was It Worth It," while "Got To Get My Heart Back" has been my favorite from the start. But "Got To Get My Heart Back" is somewhat frustrating because, with its O'Jays sample and lush strings, it's by far the best-sounding track on the album, but the liner notes are strangely unclear: every other song's credits begin with "Produced by," but next to this song it simply says "Additional production by Ron Fair" (in addition to who!?). It's also the one song where Keyshia jumps out of her comfort zone and raps a little, which has been increasingly common among R&B singers in the last few years and, and is usually a bad idea. But for some reason it totally works for her, which probably has more to do with the way it's deployed in the context of the song than Keyshia being a particularly good MC.
When I think of Keyshia Cole now, I think of that line she sings in Diddy's "Last Night" that sums up her entire career so perfectly: "all cried out with nothing to say." So much of her music, particularly the songs she became famous with, is just drama drama drama. And even after the breezy perfection of "Let It Go" (which was probably my favorite concert moment of this past Summer, at Artscape when she performed the song just as it was cresting into radio ubiquity but still sounded fresh), her second album Just Like You is still mostly about that catharsis, that constant attempt to find the most soulful way to say "why you trippin'?" She sings every song the exact same way, the same climactic big note on every song, even the one that could've had a tender/sexy delivery, "Give Me More," gets the big blown out heartbreak treatment.
I would probably talk at length about how baldly Keyshia emulates Mary J., and how she'd probably be better off forging her own identity, and is at her best when she transcends those comparisons instead of courting them, but many people have already summed it up better, particularly four four. Part of the problem is that not only does Keyshia often do warmed-over 90's Mary J., but the Shareefa album did it better (and boy does that new single "Shoulda Let You Go" sound like Darkchild recycling the beats he did for 'Reefa). Mostly, though, I wish Keyshia had followed the lead of "Let It Go" and "Last Night" into an album full of juicy 80's R&B (or at least included the whole 6-minute version of the latter instead of that stingy radio edit). Maybe next album she'll get around to fleshing out that aesthetic. In the meantime, the nods to hip hop are a little awkward: Keyshia's attempt to show some love to the Bay with the Too $hort cameo on "Didn't I Tell You" is well-intentioned, but Short Dog unfortunately sounds completely out of place on an expensive-sounding Runners beat, awkward in all the ways he somehow avoided on his other recent big time R&B guest spot, Kelis's "Bossy."
Initially, I was pretty underwhelmed by the album, and had it pegged as the same situation as that Kelly Rowland album: the one great single right up front, and then a steep slide downhill from there. But it's really grown on me, though, particularly "Losing You," and "Was It Worth It," while "Got To Get My Heart Back" has been my favorite from the start. But "Got To Get My Heart Back" is somewhat frustrating because, with its O'Jays sample and lush strings, it's by far the best-sounding track on the album, but the liner notes are strangely unclear: every other song's credits begin with "Produced by," but next to this song it simply says "Additional production by Ron Fair" (in addition to who!?). It's also the one song where Keyshia jumps out of her comfort zone and raps a little, which has been increasingly common among R&B singers in the last few years and, and is usually a bad idea. But for some reason it totally works for her, which probably has more to do with the way it's deployed in the context of the song than Keyshia being a particularly good MC.
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on Wednesday, October 10, 2007 at 9:22 AM.
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