I Can Give You a Milian Reasons Not To Buy Christina's Second CD

Says Christina Milian in the liner notes to her second American CD, "So Amazin'", while thanking (former?) label boss L.A. Reid: "thanks...for allowing me to truly express myself and allowing me to be the best artist I can be".

Says Speeddemon531: "b!tch please!!"

Two summers back, I found myself actually impressed by Milian's debut effort. Despite the fact that she wasn't much of a vocalist (that hasn't stopped lots of folks from making good albums), the album turned out to have some solid production work and a vibe close to that of a lot of 80's R&B and dance-pop, aside from the skankalicious first single "Dip it Low". It surpassed my admittedly dirt-low expectations.

Suffice to say, that lightning doesn't strike twice. "So Amazin'" is a...hang on here, I'm searching for adjectives. Here are a couple: pandering, insipid, lazy, personality deficient piece of work that contains little to nothing in the way of actual talent and artistry. As with a great many contemporary R&B/hip-hop artists, this album is filled with buzzwords and gangsta ideology designed to appeal to the "street" crowd who apparently buys records. Think about it, don't the real thugs shoplift anyway?

This is of course to say nothing of the fact that former Disney Channel star and MTV VJ Milian is about as gangsta as Rudy Huxtable and this album is best used as a coaster. The whole thing sounds like a cheap Beyonce ripoff, and Milian has about .001% of Beyonce's talent. Take away the drum machines and Pro Tools adornments and what you end up with is 43 minutes of dead air.

The album was produced by Cool & Dre. Who, you might ask? Well, they're most noted for producing The Game's "Hate it or Love It" last year and they've also punched up a couple of hits for Fat Joe and his Terror Squad associates. You will notice that the success of "Hate It" has given the duo sort of a signature sound, jacking 70's horns and strings and setting them against modern drum machine beats-something Kanye West does about a million times better. Dre (NOT, I must emphasize, Dr. Dre or even Doctor Dre from "Yo! MTV Raps") further embarrasses himself by rhyming on a couple tracks. I should also add that Dre is Milian's boyfriend. Love makes you do crazy things, doesn't it? Let's just say that as an MC, Dre's not a bad producer.

The other rap guest appearances suck equally, from Young Jeezy's wheezy, idiotic 16 bars on the monotonous club jam "Say I" (people call *this* guy a great MC?) and Three 6 Mafia's braying all over "Who's Gonna Ride", a song that has very strong stylistic similarities to the Oscar winners' (I still get a kick out of saying that) hit from last summer, "Stay Fly", down to the drawn-out saying of a word (in this case, "ride") in the chorus.

The worst offender on this album just might be "Hot Boy", which begins "I can cook a steak up/While you hook up a stake out" and goes downhill from there. Have we not grown past extremely tired hood cliche over the course of the past few years? It's insulting hearing this privileged girl who's probably never been near an actual ghetto in her life without security try to pass herself out as this super-ghetto chick. And if you're gonna play the role, at least have the cojones to actually use the MF word in the song instead of wiping the last half out with a sound effect. Ah well, I guess the fake-gangsta market of under-eighteens is a viable market too, huh?

There isn't much to recommend on this album, a point I hope I've made abundantly clear at this point. Milian sort of redeems herself towards the end with two ballads (one written by song doctor of the moment Ne-Yo), but they're both the sort of songs that sound good on the radio when they're playing, but not good enough for you to actually go out and buy the CD. The album's last track, "She Don't Know", finds Milian morphing from psuedo Beyonce to not-quite J. Lo. She plays the Latina sexpot "other woman" on this song...oh, how cliche. And the Spanish guitars on this track might be the only actual non-sampled musical instruments on this album that are not keyboards.

So, you ask, do I have any reason at all to buy this album? Well, there are a couple of pictures of the sexy Milian amid the liner notes. But you can probably just as easily get those on the internet, and you won't have to worry about wiping the semen stains off of the CD booklet.

The rumor mill says that Milian was released from the Island/Def Jam roster within ten days of this album's less-than-stellar debut, and it's hard to argue with that executive decision. After all, she can't sing, has no artistic merit to speak of, and can't even pull a Paula Abdul or Britney Spears and hit us with a catchy hit every now and then...Ms. Milian, here's hoping you make the switch and become a Playboy model. Because the qualities found in that profession are probably the reason that any of the guys (and probably some of the girls) who buy your records are looking for anyway.

"So Amazin'" by Christina Milian
Released 2006 on the Island Def Jam Music Group
Rating: 1/2 out of 5 stars