Jennifer Lopez “J-Lo”
Jennifer Lopez “J-Lo” Sony
Music
Pop music has reached an all new “J-Lo.” Jennifer
Lopez’s newest album, a hodgepodge of club music,
Latin-tinged pop and ballads, offers little in quality music beyond
a few catchy songs. Lopez has never been known for having a
powerful or unique voice, and “J-Lo” does nothing to
dispute that fact. Throughout the album, her vocals sound thin, as
if all their emotion and warmth have been filtered out.
Lopez’s vocals aren’t powerful enough to carry the
songs, but the rest of the music pulls her through. As a whole, the
songs have good packaging, like most current pop tunes. They are
well-polished and full of synthesized drumbeats, keyboards, backup
vocals and special effects. They offer little more than a beat to
nod your head to. “Love Don’t Cost A Thing,” one
of the better cuts, has decent beats, but ridiculous lyrics,
setting the album’s mediocre tone. The dance songs,
especially the Latin ones, are better than the ballads. Slow tunes
like “Come Over” and “Secretly” trudge on
from beginning to weary end. Ballads give artists a great
opportunity to show their range, but Lopez’s dull delivery
adds nothing to the trite songs. “Cariño” has a
good vibe, and Lopez phrases the words almost like speech, but the
lyrics are poorly written and Lopez’s performance is far from
dynamic. She sounds totally uninspired as she sings, “I got
so much love to give you/that I would probably want you all the
time.” “Si Ya Se Acabó,” has a grooving
Latin pop style and is worth a listen. The driving beat, guitar and
horn riffs and multi-vocal chorus make this one of the more
interesting songs on the album. Usually when vocalists reach up to
their higher registers, the color of their voice changes, and
higher notes convey deeper emotional substance. Not here. On
“That’s the Way,” Lopez’s vocals on the
high end are so emotionless, they’re almost mind-numbing.
Unfortunately, there’s barely a memorable phrase or line on
the entire album. Essentially all the songs can be divided by
lyrical content into two categories: “Baby, I’m sorry,
come back to me” and “Baby, respect me, love me.”
Listeners can paraphrase all of Lopez’s lyrics simply by
inserting one of these two phrases in each song. One of the few
memorable lines is during “That’s Not Me,” where
Lopez sings, “I looked in the mirror every day/I saw myself
fading away/you tryin’ to mold me into her.” After
playing the songs a few times, they get a little better, but not
much. Hopefully Lopez won’t quit her acting career.
Chris Young Rating: 4
Shuggie Otis "Inspiration Information" Luaka
Bop
If there’s one thing the major record companies hate more
than originality, it’s an artist who thinks and acts
independently. Corporate suits who are more concerned with profit
margins than the expansion of America’s greatest art form, is
the reason college students can name every song released by generic
sheep-pop bands *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys, while they
wouldn’t recognize geniuses like Prince or Terrance Trent
D’arby if they handed out their own albums on Bruin Walk.
Major labels prefer artists that they can pigeonhole and control,
and the result is that the truly great musicians fade into
obscurity while mediocrity goes platinum ten times over. One of the
great casualties of the ’70s California soul scene was Los
Angeles musician Shuggie Otis. A musical prodigy, Otis released a
soul masterpiece in 1974, “Inspiration Information”
that was so brilliant and ahead of its time that Otis’ label,
Epic Records, had no choice but to bury the record and drop him
from the label. The album, which Otis wrote, arranged, produced
(although his father Johnny Otis received the producer credit) and
performed, set the standard for future DIY artists and
genre-hopping performers. “Inspiration Information,”
which took a then-unheard of three years to record, has recently
been reissued by Luaka Bop Records. For musicologists this disc is
an absolute must-buy. It’s amazing how many modern genres are
explored on this disc. The stripped-down folky blues of
“Sweet Thang” would fit in nicely on any Ben Harper
disc, while futuristic, drum machine-backed tracks like
“XL-30″ and “Pling” predate the French
ambient techno scene by a solid 25 years. Aside from the
groundbreaking aspects of this disc, “Inspiration
Information” is a groovy listen from beginning to end. A true
’70s soul act, the album features several tracks which would
fit into the style of the time with the sweeping synthesized
strings and guitar style that were typical of the Isaac Hayes,
Curtis Mayfield recordings of the period. If Otis’ original
rendition of “Strawberry Letter 23,” which later became
a huge hit for the Brothers Johnson, was released as a single, it
would likely be the best R&B record of the year. The same could
be said about the title track. Otis has a strong, soulful voice
that occupies a middle ground between Little Stevie Wonder and the
late Jackie Wilson, and is greatly benefited by his lo-fi
production approach. All the musicianship is first rate. Nothing on
this disc sounds like it was performed with the economic bottom
line in consideration. As wonderful as this disc is, most listeners
will never have the opportunity to hear this gem of a recording.
Corporate radio and MTV are even more conservative now than they
were in 1974. The sad truth of the matter is that this disc has
next to no chance of going platinum. Otis didn’t record this
disc to sell records though. He made this classic for people who
like to listen to great music. Now, fans of soul-based music, this
is a golden opportunity to own one of the most innovative discs of
the entire genre.
Scott Schultz Rating: 9
Joi “We Are Three” Real World
Joi’s “We Are Three,” its second release for
Peter Gabriel’s Real World label, is a brilliant stab at
ethnic dance music, combining the highest of hi-tech production
standards with gritty samples recorded in the streets of Bengal,
India. Moving from breakbeat electronica to disco house to avant
garde alternative, Joi covers a lot of ground without
oversaturating its sound with nationality, as is common among
ethnotechno hybrids. Joi is comprised of brothers Haroon and Farook
Shamsher, who were born in India and raised next to London’s
dance clubs. Having built up a reputation as the self-described
“original Asian backbeat fusionists” earlier in the
decade, the brothers released their first album “One and One
is Three” to critical acclaim in 1999. Only a few months
after their first album’s release and their second’s
genesis, Haroon suffered a fatal heart attack, effectively ending
the band’s existence. “We Are Three” still shines
with an uncommon exuberance for breakbeat music, with tracks like
“The Holy Side” piling layers of distorted drum beats
atop soul-grasping synth lines, and others like
“Triatma” working in acoustic guitars and sitars over
puncturing bass beats and string washes. On some of the more catchy
pieces, such as “Don’t Cha Know That” or
“Deep Asian Vibes,” Joi picks up where The Crystal
Method and The Chemical Brothers left off, but trades pompousness
for ecstasy. While a few tracks on “We Are Three,” such
as the slow-moving “Flying With You” and the rather
indigestible “Prem,” might keep the album from being a
true masterpiece, ultimate fusionary tracks like “We Need
Your Vote” make the album definitely worth checking out and
earning heavy rotation in the CD carousel.
Cyrus McNally Rating: 8