In my recent post about 2005 I referred to Brooke Valentine's Chain Letter as one of my favorite albums of that year, without realizing that the long-delayed follow-up Physical Education had just been released. Actually, not really, because the Physical Education Mixtape Album is a pathetic little 9-song indie release, which is apparently being looked at as a 'teaser' for the album that she still seems to think will still come out someday, even though the album's first single was released in 2006. It's kind of like she came out of the same 4-year R&B wormhole as the Rich Harrison girl group I was writing about the other day.

On Chain Letter, Valentine exuded a kind of weirdo personality, sense of humor, and wide swath of influences that feels much more in step with what's going on in R&B now, or at least a lot more tolerated on the fringes of the mainstream. But because her breakthrough single was with Lil Jon, she kind of got written off immediately as a Ciara knockoff, which was a shame. Now, she's doing more generically sexy stuff, in keeping with the whole Physical Education theme, but she can pull it off partly because she is, after all, super smoking hot. And there's still a little bit of wackiness in that approach (look no further than the title of "Do Me Shorts") and some deadpan humor (in the highlight, "Gold Diggin'"). But anytime a record like this, clearly recorded with mass market chart pop action in mind, probably mostly a couple years ago, ends up surfacing as a dated little indie release, it's all just a little sad.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 09, 2009 at 8:39 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.