“I’d love to make another rap album”: Queen Latifah said this back in 2007 in a Billboard.com interview. Few people took notice, and I don’t necessarily blame anyone for the lukewarm reception. Given Latifah’s musical activity -- two albums in the last ten years, sans a rap record -- why would anyone do so, really? Trav’lin’ Light, due for release a week after the interview, was decidedly restricted to jazz standards, and was the second straight non-rap album from the Queen. In fact, with each album since she debuted with 1989’s All Hail the Queen, Latifah sung more and more, eventually getting to the point when she sang just as much as she rapped. Besides, isn’t she some big-time, Academy Award-nominated movie personality nowadays, instead of the daring female behemoth who once yelled, “Who you callin’ a b***h?”
In the interview, Latifah alluded to a demographic in their late 30s and early 40s (i.e., people like her) who hungered for rap music that catered to them. Well, with her return to rap in Persona, she might as well add the need to revalidate the presence of female rappers. After all, that always-miniscule milieu has been all but decimated by a lethal combination of legal transgressions and gross inactivity. Lil’ Kim is apparently too busy doing the tango on national television to bother about doing the hanky-panky on record, let alone make one. Latest substantial press Foxy Brown got was being in cahoots with some corpulent kingpin-wannabe rapper from Miami. Hardly anyone cared (or bought) Trina’s latest album, the ironically-titled Still da Baddest. Remy Ma is languishing in jail. Da Brat was a has-been a good half-decade before she laughably accused Jane Wieldin of The Go-Go’s of being one. By now, virtually no one even bothers checking for Lauryn Hill anymore, as it is now surmised that she lost her pebbles a long time ago. Jean Grae -- poor, lovely Jean Grae -- will always be relegated to a suppressive underground scene. As for the rest of the pitifully few female rappers, particularly in relation to today’s current music climate? Not significant enough to even warrant a mention.
It’s one tough call for the Queen, though. After all, her last rap album, 1998’s Order in the Court, made as much noise as a pebble dropped into a lake. However, anyone familiar with Queen Latifah’s seminal work in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s -- from the feminist anthem “Ladies First” to the classic anti-misogyny manifesto “U.N.I.T.Y.” -- should have confidence that regardless of the likeliness of rust, she might still be able to deliver the goods…right?
Unfortunately, with Persona, she doesn’t.
Why? Well, let me start off by saying this: Latifah just…doesn’t engage. Hardly anything she raps (and yes, sings -- she will always sing!) warrants more than a few listens. Ok, true, she performs efficiently, I’m not taking that away from her, but when the only songs that arouse any substantial interest are the Missy Elliott-featuring “Fast Car” and “Cue the Rain” -- which are really just sufficiently done synth-laden club joints -- well, that’s a major problem. And it’s not like Persona does not bear innocent and noble messages, or attempt to run the gamut of human experience and emotion -- be it the celebration of (New Jersey) success (“The Light”), the accounts of perseverance ( “People” and “The World”), musing about marriage and conjuring images of her slain brother, Lance (“Over the Mountain”), songs for potential significant others (one, two…three…make that four of them), or even something as simple as looking forward to the weekend after a long, grueling work week (“Long A*s Week”). It’s just that you would be hard pressed to play or remember any selection of this collection of 14 songs in, say, a week or two -- and hell, Order in the Court is far from the best album in La’s catalog, but even from there, I still remember “Bananas.” In fact, one of the Persona songs in particular, the stuttering interpolation of Bon Jovi’s “Runaway” (“Runnin”), is borderline atrocious.
And of course, I will not absolve the production duo of Cool & Dre of any wrongdoing here since, well, they are responsible for about 90 percent of Persona‘s sound: nothing but synths, synths, synths -- and Auto-Tune. Yes, they play it safe, really safe, which, in a sense, is understandable. I mean, you want the Queen to sound like she’s rapping in 2009, not 1989, right? Well, but therein lies the problem: It just sounds like any other mainstream rap and R&B album out there, with hardly any tweaks to distinguish itself from an oversaturated market. Now regardless of how I feel about their talents (B-level, at best) or that their peak was about half a decade ago (remember Ja Rule’s “New York” and The Game’s “Hate It or Love It”?), the last thing you want your music to sound like -- especially when one of the legendary figures of hip-hop is revving for a…ok, let me call it like it is…a semi-rap comeback -- is being on a merely soulless, perfunctory level.
I mean, damn, did anyone even know that the former Queen of Royal Badness was putting out an album?!? It might as well have not been released at all, because the nicest thing I can say about Persona is that this has to be the most uniformly lukewarm album I have listened to in ages -- the quietest failed comeback in quite a while, perhaps ever. And this leads me to think of Mike’s response to the album preview I wrote a few months back: “I don’t know about this one...do we really need to hear a 40 year old Latifah rapping?”
Yeah, maybe not, Mike, maybe not. In fact, she might just want to pull a Will Smith and stick to movies.
TRACK LISTING:
1. The Light 2. Fast Car 3. Cue the Rain 4. My Couch 5. Take Me (With You) 6. With You 7. Hard to Love Ya 8. What’s the Plan 9. Long A*s Week 10. Runnin 11. People 12. If he Wanna 13. Over the Mountain 14. The World
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