Janet Jackson Damita Jo
I am so sorry, Kanwe West. I am sorry you were somehow tricked into doing a track on Janet's new album, Damita Jo. How horribly embarrassing it must be for you to be associated with pop's princess right when she drops her biggest, steamiest loaf to date. If anyone thought that Janet was going to clean up her act after the FCC made a field day out of her latest career blunder, boy were they wrong. Damita Jo is dirtier than any album Janet has ever done, and more explicit than any album I've had the sense to listen to.
Almost all twenty-something tracks draw up unwelcome mental pictures of Janet and boyfriend/fliancée Jermaine Dupri doing the sexual mambo and it isn't pretty. Heavy sampling runs amok on Damita, and rather than breathe life into the tracks, it punches holes into the once healthy lung of the youngest Jackson's work, no thanks to producer Babyface, who strays from his area of expertise and into Timbaland's turf. "Sexhibition" samples Nelly and Timberlake, "Like You Don't Love Me" squeezes in a reunited Tribe Called Quest with almost the entire beat to Lucy Pearl's "Dance Tonight". One of the better, but hardly up to Janet-standard tracks, "All Night," uses a surprising blend of a funky line from Herbie Handcock's "Hang Up Your Hang-Ups" with Moby's "Porcelain." What is even more surprising is Janet's dirty talk spread-eagle over the entire album, bringing a new meaning to verbal ejaculation. The muffled lyrics on "Moist" doubles as a tutorial in male fellatio that would make even Dr. Dennis Dailey shift in his seat. Janet, didn't you get the memo? That's Britney's job. You can go back to making amazing dance music and keep your dignity.
Grade: D-
Kelly Bumpas, host of Breakfast for Beatlovers Fridays, 9 a.m. to noon
N.E.R.D.
Fly or Die
Someone once said to me, "If you were half at hot as this album, maybe you could get a date." They weren't talking about N.E.R.D's new album Fly or Die though, because if they were, I would have gone into seclusion forever and never forgiven them.
For those who were turned off by the juvenile lyrics back in 2002, "She said she needs me/ she says she wants me/cause I'm the [expletive]," you might want to back that ass up and step away from the counter at your local music store. Pharrell
has never been up for a Pulitzer in poetry, but he's actually become more immature. "Her ass is a space ship I'd like to ride"? Or what about Pharrell admitting in the first line of a song, "I wrote this song when I was drunk"? But despite the embarrassing rhymes, no doubt somewhere in the world there is a line of women forming who are wearing spaceships for pants and practicing hovercraft noises for Pharrell, Chad and that other useless guy no one cares about.
Most of the beats are weak distant cousins of In Search Of. Eighty-six the percussive keyboards, substitute unskilled, live instrumentation (and Lenny Kravitz) and you get an album that begs the question: Can they even do it on their own anymore? Or do Britney and Justin deserve more credit than we thought?
Grade: C-
— Kelly Bumpas, host of Breakfast for Beatlovers Fridays, 9 a.m. to noon