Wo-man or she-man? Only Bow-wizzle knows the answer.
And it comes courtesy of Ciara. Ciara's got some obvious limitations, and even in her best moments she's never quite reached the infinitely replayable pop perfection of an Aaliyah, nor, for that matter, does she have a whole lot of personality, but at least she's not stone-cold-retarded like Rihanna or an endlessly infuriating retrograde hoebot like Beyonce, or a sweet little affable airhead like Chris Brown. (And with her lack of real talent, she'll never be a drearily competent pro like Ne-Yo.) Doubt I'll ever listen to one of her albums, but she usually makes pleasant enough disposable singles that I don't get too mad at when I'm forced to hear them on the radio 300 times. And she's just given us another one. Over some mediocre but effective enough keyboard preset slow jam work from Polow Da Don, she basically updates/remakes/interpolates the soul classic, "If You Don't Know Me By Now." With such great material, it's hard to go wrong, and while she doesn't take it anywhere too interesting, the vocal's quite respectable and affecting, and together she and Polow do a decent job of updating the song for 2009. The only problem is a lazy dud of a Jeezy verse that employs the same exact flow as his abysmal feature on "Love In The Club." (There's also a pun-shoutout to 808s and Heartbreak, reminding the listener of the increasingly lame circles in which Jeezy travels.) Why does any pop/r&b singer call Jeezy for a feature when they could get Weezy? The guy hasn't had a good guest spot on a non-rap song since his transcendent verse on "Say I" and he was terrible on LITC, his feature on Mariah's album, J.Hud's 'Spotlight,' and now this. (Actually, that's not entirely true - he was mildly fun on "I Luv Your Girl" and I suppose he was okay on "Amazin.") The more crappy r&b guest spots Jeezy does, the less the demographic the r&b singers who get him on their shit are trying to cater to will like him. Did that make sense?
2 comments:
how transcendent can a verse be if i barely even remember the song from whence it came?
Um, not too transcendent? I'm a fan, though. It's the one where he cracked of his baby mama, "no high school diploma, but I know math/ain't write one song and she still want half." I really fear Jeezy's headed into Nelly-like obsolescence. Though strangely, I seem to be the only person I know who sees a huge dropoff between 2008 Jeezy and Inspiration Jeezy or even 2007 Jeezy; everyone else hates him now and always has, or loves his latest work and liked the earlier stuff. I have a theory, though, that people are slow to admit or notice when a rapper/athlete/actor they like is falling off.
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