audio review : Gratitude ( album ) … Mary J Blige

audio review : Gratitude ( album ) ... Mary J Blige

It’s awkward to begin your album with a guest verse. It’s also off-putting to start it with trite samples and interpolations. Luckily for Mary J Blige, rather the longtime fans she apparently dedicated this album to in a show of Gratitude, things get more original and less irksome (better) from there. Groovy highlights include Beautiful People, Can’t Wait For You and Don’t Fuck Up.

my rating : 3 of 5

2024

video review : The Pepsi Super Bowl 56 Halftime Show

video review : The Pepsi Super Bowl 56 Halftime Show

Snoop Dogg is the highlight here and that’s not a weed pun. In a Halftime Show full of stilted performances; Mary J Blige, who isn’t a protégé of Dr Dre and shouldn’t have been included, goes way over the top; he easily comes across as the most authentic and likeable. Watching him Crip walk to California Love, you’d think he was entertaining guests at a backyard barbeque; not on stage in front of the biggest viewing audience in America.

50 Cent is comparatively stiff, but he at least has sexy groupies In Da Club with him. The logic of giving three fat chicks a stage to themselves is lost on me. Not that the show, which is a bit of a mess, makes a lot of sense in the first place. Eminem is big enough to headline The Super Bowl on his own. His appearance here to perform his most obvious hit comes across as both anticlimactic and corny. Still he’s not as annoying as Kendrick Lamar. Few rappers are.

my rating : 2 of 5