is the ciara album worth getting?

"Aretha was perhaps a bad example. a modern balladeer eg. Teedra Moses doesn't appear to be expressing fidelity to Aretha and deliberately ignoring Whitney or Mariah, she's expressing fidelity to the R&B ballad tradition as a whole, which includes even the treacliest Babyface material."

Yeah I'd agree with this definitely.

surprised there's no discussion of her new track here of all places

Yeah, “Level Up” is great!

https://youtu.be/Dh-ULbQmmF8

(and Ciara has become a niche interest on ILM, just like almost everything else that’s interesting and fun, sadly)

She's a niche interest now because her last album was really boring, but if this is representative of the new one then I'm on board.

this sounds like it's already been given its own Soundcloud Deconstructed Club Edit

This is fucking great

Yep, way to save everybody some time and jump right to the Jersey club remix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBcXmRe5UAw

this predates Level Up which is strange because when I first heard it I thought it was a parody

also this now has a remix with Missy Elliott and Fatman Scoop, which is actually really phoned in but also cute for existing

yeah it's explicitly based on that, I think they're credited even?

"level up" is just okay to me. i like the vid tho and am glad it's getting her some attention

https://youtu.be/NSIDTlG6bbs

OMFG. This is above and beyond anything I might have hoped for at this stage.

A couple of years ago this would have felt like a daring left turn but now it feels like a perfectly natural move that could do numbers but I'm still overjoyed it actually happened.

Love this so much

So it looks like the strategy for this album is to get Ciara on as many genre playlists as possible but if the execution is this good on all of them then I'm onboard.

I also feel like afrobeats hasn't inflitrated US R&B and rap to anywhere near the extent it has in the UK, so this might actually lead somewhere exciting? I mean the alternative is that no one there cares about her any more, but if you're going to bandwagon jump to mitigate that then this is a pretty good one to be on.

love both these tracks but lmao at Level Up being based on Fuck It Up Challenge

I approve of this collabo, but “Freak Me” didn’t come out of thin air either. It sounded super familiar, and yes:
https://www.google.nl/amp/s/amp.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/ciara-samples-tiwa-savage-on-new-single-freak-me-with-tekno-id8708959.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcfwvX0HPVI

three for three

Yep. At first I thought "hmm a Lose My Breath rip off" but it rewards repeat plays. A+ video too.

haven't heard yet (no headphones at work) but does this one have a prominent sample as well?

not feeling this so much - functional and perfunctory but nowhere near the level of the last two

new song is super gorgeous, fuck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BjpWJyd_hk

Beauty Marks is another disappointment.

ton of good stuff on the record, kind of a DOA first track though

"thinkin bout you" song of the year

I like the one.

I really can't stand this tendency to lapse into therapyspeak with goddamn Macklemore and the title track.

* I like THAT one

the bookends are the worst, it's true. really love the run from "dose" to "freak me," which should've been in the ilm 77 last year

'I Love Myself ft Macklemore' is a blazing do-not-listen-to-this batsignal that I sadly failed to heed.

The rest rules but the afrobeats tracks >>>>> all.

You might like the original “Freak of the Week” as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeasOeUgkA8

Tiwa Savage ft. D’Prince • Before Nko

(I posted about this upthread as well, but I feel it’s important to give credit where it’s due. This is more than just a sample or an interpolation.)

Woof, minus a few of the singles this is a stinker

yikes

not a stinker but what a disappointment - the good stuff here is the adventurous and unexpected sonic moves so the first half being heavy on the formulaic r&b is really uninspiring and I really don't need another "I'm going to out to have fun" xerox like Girl Gang. She's always been more comfortable than most others doing weird stuff and Level Up/Freak Me were the first time in ages I felt she had broke out the bubble of yesteryear r&b star, so why this falls back into really lacklustre stuff seems a mystery. And both the opener and closer are terrible choices.