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The older I get, the more often I get
Feelings I can't explain, mostly in the
The 99 percent of things I did not say
I've suddenly evolved from nothing at all to somewhat lady like
My clothes begin to fit and
My jeans they hug my hips to catch the young boys eyes
=

In an attempt at actually following through on what I say I'll do, I've decided to sit down with the debut album from pop singer Brooke Hogan, daughter of the world famous wrestler known by his stage name as "Hulk." Brooke seems to be in the same league as Lindsay Lohan, Tyra Banks, and Lisa Marie Presely; this club of pop stars and pop flops all have famous connections to help make their careers skyrocket or were actresses who picked up an auto-tune spiked microphone, but they don't actually develop their own style. Whether we're discussing Paris Hilton's painful eponymous release or Jamie Lynn Siegler, they are all part-time wannabes whose music videos represent every cliche in the book. Brooke Hogan's debut album Undiscovered is a typical pop record without a lot of personality-- at least, not Brooke's. She has neither the vocal range of Janet Jackson or Roisin Murphy, nor does she have the stage presence of Madonna. Her record is everything you would expect it to be: the beats are hold-overs from other projects, the lyrics are nothing special, and her vocal ability is minimal and, at times, quite whiny. Performed by a girl who grew up singing into her hairbrush, Undiscovered is everything that Brooke thought a pop always was; but when you did anything to the table aside from the fact that you are a damn good dancer, well, it makes the album rather irrelevant.

Undiscovered was released in 2008, reaching the Top 40 on the US Hot 100 chart and selling a little over 100,000 copies, which is far less than I'm sure she had intended. The record was produced by Scott Storch, who has history producing crappy pop albums for little girls who want to be the next music queens (Paris?). His beats on the record are not awful, but they are not stand-out either. In a sea of generic synth claps and sugary sweet beats, these are not as slick as Jermaine Dupri's or body-shaking as Stargate's. He did an okay job, but that's more than I expect from this album. As for the woman of the hour, Ms. Brooke Hogan, she does not exactly have a diva quality. Her vocals are either over-processed beneath a layer of Storch's instrumentation or sound like karaoke. The girl can sing, yes, but she's nothing all that special. Rather than have a true vocal ability, she can carry a tune better than say Britney Spears or Miley Cyrus. It's her lack of personality than makes her album rather dull. The pop-radio hit About Us came out of left field in terms of airplay, but the song itself is just generic and mind-numbing enough to be called a true late-millennium tune. The high-pitched whine of the synth has been fully utilized by other boring pop starlets like Ciara, so it's not surprisingly Brooke was use it as well. The chorus has a great hook, but the verses go in one ear and out the other, and with a rather stupid introduction by Paul Wall, it's not the best example of the marginal talent this girl may have.

Brooke lends her lyrics to two of the fourteen tracks on this album, which is not a good ratio for someone like her. Unlike, say, Tina Turner, who has one of the greatest voices to ever be pressed to vinyl and can get away with not writing her own material, Brooke Hogan...well, can't. What makes this girl so special? All About Me (wait, I thought it was about us, Brooke, how you gonna me like that??) is a boring track that sounds like a Kelly Clarkson leftover with the awkward electric guitar strumming in the back-- the probably is that I keep waiting for Kelly to start busting out with her powerhouse vocals. Unfortunately, Brooke doesn't have the same capability, and she just comes off as a whinebag. A lot of these songs lack melodies (at least, original ones), and you can tell by all the names I dropped in this review that Brooke isn't exactly the star of the show. Brooke Hogan seems to be that girl from middle school who performed in the tenth annual lip-sync contest-- she's boring. My Number, featuring another rent-a-rapper in Stacks, is a recycled piece of po(o)p that was done about a million times by Destiny's Child back in the mid-90s. All of these tracks have beats that you've heard before if you have ever turned on MTV, with a strong influence from Timbaland, Danja, a little Busta Rhymes.

On the bright side, there is little on this album that actually annoys me. For the most part, Undiscovered stands a background album without presence one way or the other, but there are some slight moments that are painful to listen to: namely, Heaven Baby, which find Brooke singing in a really drunken octave that makes her sound sloppy and robotic. The more enjoyable moments include the catchy My Space, which is a straight up clubbanger with serious grooving potential, and Beautiful Transformation, a mellow reggae-inspired jam with some of the album's better literary moments. Undiscovered is the type of album where you can predict all its bags of tricks the more the album goes on. Unlike the slick USA debut of Asian pop-star BoA, Brooke Hogan's album is very much a product of what it hot right now (but it doesn't quite click). Her ballad Letting Go sounds like every other bittersweet slow jam before it, similar to anything Mariah Carey put on her last record E=MC2. Brooke's contribution to her own debut is quite alarming, and it's not like Scott Storch's lackluster songwriting capabilities are going to make up for anything she lacks. There are better pop albums that this one, sung (or warbled) by artists with much more personality. Her attempts at neo-soul don't match her vocal talent, her rock tracks don't have the power to go where they to, but she occasionally hits a sweet spot with dance music-- occasionally.

VERDICT
Is anybody actually surprised I gave this album 2 stars?

01. About Us [3.5 Stars]
02. Heaven Baby [1 Star]
03. Next Time [3 Stars]
04. For a Moment [1 Star]
05. My Space [3.5 Stars]
06. All About Me [2 Stars]
07. My Number [2 Stars]
08. Beautiful Transformation [4 Stars]
09. One Sided Love [2 Stars]
10. Letting Go [2 Stars]
11. Dance Alone [2 Stars]
12. Love You, Hate You [2.5 Stars]
13. Incognito [2 Stars]
14. Low Rider Jeans [1 Star]

BEST: Beautiful Transformation
WORST: Heaven Baby

SCORE: 2 STARS (2.2- )

Recommended: No