Keyshia Cole's 3rd album, A Different Me was released with surprisingly little fanfare last month, selling well but still seemingly caught in the 4th quarter shuffle, with an underperforming single, an ancient and previously released posthumous 2Pac collab, "Playa Cards Right." Her last album, released barely a year earlier, spun off 4 hits singles, 3 of which hit #1 on the R&B chart, basically confirming her as the major star that she'd been positioned to become for a couple years. And yet, it doesn't feel like she's arrived, it just feels like the label threw her record out there at Christmastime with a 2-year-old single. And it's a shame, because it's definitely her best album to date. Early tracks like "Please Don't Stop" and "Erotic" mark the album as her shift to a sexier image (the outro hilariously declares "thank you for hangin' with the sexier side of me"), but it's the strong uptempo modern that keeps it from being just a long run of slow, romantic babymakers. Polow Da Don's "Make Me Over" and the Runners' "Please Don't Stop" manage to set the mood with uptempo tracks that feel more of a piece with Keyshia's grown up retro R&B than the sounds those producers are best known for. But most of all, thank god she's finally using those great pipes for something other than overemoting on increasingly tiresome tales of heartbreak.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 05, 2009 at 8:40 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.