I was a big fan of Cool J\u2019s when I was younger. I must have played his best albums, 1985\u2019s Radio<\/i> and 1990\u2019s Mama Said Knock You Out<\/i> hundreds of times throughout my teenage years. At his best, Cool J was a master of mixing genres and collaborating with an array of different artists and somehow managing to get the most creative moments out of them. In recent years, however, Cool J has fallen into the trap of following current trends: letting anyone who is anyone grace his works, with all too familiar results. His last good album was six records and almost ten years ago (that of course being the solid and mostly pleasing 10<\/i>).<\/p>\n
During those years, there has been no shortage of quantity but a definite decline in quality, which has made a once big fan like myself very wary of buying new releases. I keep hoping for a return to form much like some of his contemporaries have done so over the last few years, namely R. Kelly. Clearly, though, I still buy his albums because there are always some great tracks on them despite how messy and chaotic some of his recent releases have been. <\/p>\n
This year\u2019s new offering Authentic<\/i> is no exception whatsoever. It is stuck together in a chaotic fashion and although it contains a couple of gems, it is for the most part a messy and incoherent affair. The best moments come when Cool J gets in touch with his younger and hipper self, most notably with the great Bootsy Collins on the funk-jam \u201cBartender Please.\u201d The sexy R-Rated \u201cBetween The Sheetz\u201d (with Mickey Shiloh) is a fine groove, and Seal\u2019s lead vocal on \u201cGive Me Love\u201d helps to lift that one above the pack as well. \u201cWhaddup\u201d is old-school hip-hop, albeit from the Prince & N.P.G. class of \u201995; but it\u2019s good fun.<\/p>\n
The only other track worth mentioning is the album\u2019s opener \u201cBath Salt,\u201d and that\u2019s only because it\u2019s marginally better than the rest of the stuff served up here and unfortunately contains the rather ironic line: \u201cNever tried to sound like a rapper I raised.\u201d Elsewhere, Eddie Van Halen throws down some stuff he could do in his sleep on a couple of tracks, while further guest spots from Brad Paisley, Monica and Charlie Wilson offer nothing even remotely memorable.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Authentic<\/i> is anything but; it may be a long wait for Cool J to hit pay dirt again, but I\u2019m not holding my breath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":31756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8485],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-43470","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ll-cool-j","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43470"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43470"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}