Music Album: Talk a Good Game by Kelly Rowland

With Kelly’s last album, not only did she score the biggest hit of her solo career with ‘Motivation’, but it also revealed an individuality that seemed to take her out of the over-empowering shadow of Beyoncé. With her latest, that individuality and independent identity seems to have disappeared which is mostly due to her very honest revelations on the emotional ballad, ‘Dirty Laundry’ – written and produced by The Dream (the superstar producer with whom Beyoncé frequently collaborates with).

Musically, Talk a Good Game still delivers on certain levels, especially when the songstress takes a slow tempo and moderate vocal delivery approach as she does on songs like ‘#1,’ ‘Kisses Down Low’ and ‘Down On Love.’ She soars on the tender ballads ‘I Remember’ and ‘This Is Love,’ and while her collaboration with Wiz Khalifa on ‘Gone’ is awesome as it sample Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi,’ Janet Jackson’s Gone ‘Til Its Gone suffices as a better and more memorable sample of the iconic song.

On other parts of the album, the directions of the songs seem to unbalance the overall music direction, making it a confusing musical experience in its entirety. The album was originally named Year of the Woman, and Kelly claims that she was inspired by r&b sounds that she grew up listening to but that inspiration is somewhat non-existent in the content which she provides. ‘Game is not an awful album, but it is not an awesome one either. The direction she took with Here I Am could have been explored further and could have cemented her as a contemporary urban r&b force.