In 2004, upon the release of Ciara Harris's excellent debut Goodies, Lil Jon christened the 21-year-old Atlanta starlet the "Princess of crunk & B." Crowning a first-album singer the Princess of ANYTHING is premature (witness Def Jam/Roc-a-Fella singer Teairra Mari: once "Princess of the Roc," now dropped). But with CC, as we came to know her, the crown fit. As a breathy alto and successor to Aaliyah, she was no slouch-- a Dirty South debutante with melodies, moves, and moxie-- and Goodies was delicious, ripe with electro-bass bits and year-making guest appearances (Ludacris on "Oh", what).
Goodies had no fat to cut. The Evolution is puffy with non-stunners and factory stamps. In Ciara's effort to prove herself a diva, her second album flails, bloated with spoken-word interludes and boilerplate pop & b that obscures some truly good songs. On The Evolution, Ciara tries too hard to fashion herself after her idols Janet Jackson and Aaliyah. She overextends and overexplains, sacrificing her Southernness and stumbling on her own fleet feet.
It starts out strong, with the hi-impact Lil Jon bonecrusher "That's Right", in which Ciara asserts her right to party with her girls and have fun (or "phone," as she puts it in her interminably charming down-south brogue). That's followed by the excellent "Like a Boy", a stadium anthem about double standards dramatized by up-and-coming co-ed production team the Clutch. But after the mondo-hit "Promise", the purple-storm Polow Da Don ballad Ciara serves like a sensual après-Prince, The Evolution begins its slow downward slide. Ciara wants to prove how much she's grown in two years, mostly by proffering grand-statement anthems and bland anysongs between meta-tracks about dancing and some genuinely solid pop singles. She intros many of these with life-coach-y spoken interludes and mid-song soliloquies-- a throwback to Jackson's Control. Unfortunately, her generalized bon mots can come off forced, flat, and workhorse-like, and they're not even all that personal (i.e., "The past years of my life have truly been a journey"). Standard-issue tracks include:
-
Two Missy Elliott-style throwback jams (the Bambaataa-esque "I Proceed" and "Make it Last Forever"), which producer Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins patterned after Rob Base and E-Z Rock's "It Takes Two". On the break, Ciara raps Base's iconic verse almost verbatim, which seems lazy, at best.
-
Two kiln-fired, "baby-girl" type crossover singles, in the spirit of "Like You", her great duet with alleged ex-boyfriend Bow Wow. One song features 50 Cent and a music-box synth (the admittedly delectable dopeboy-lover "Can't Leave 'Em Alone"). The other is called "My Love". Both conjure benched G-Unit crooner Olivia.
-
One weirdly wooden metaphor using the fit of her jeans as example of her growth as a person and artist. Stop talking… stay dancing!
Part of The Evolution's weakness is testament to the inevitability of producers like Darkchild, whose sound has been so distinct and so ubiquitous in the past year it's starting to feel like wallpaper. But Ciara's spoken-word interludes are her own conceit, an assumption that we need her to tell us who she is. When Ciara's singing, production and assertions of grown-womanhood synergize, she rules both on the dancefloor and in the ozone. She hasn't earned the right to strut like a veteran, but on The Evolution, it's like she's forgotten she's already a Princess.
