LITTLE ROCK — Pitbull
Global Warming
Polo Grounds/RCA
B-
Pitbull’s latest studio album, Global Warming, shows that the Miami rapper has what it takes to be an even bigger success. On his follow-up to Planet P, the beats are bigger and so are the guest artists (Usher, Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguilera). Granted, he only sings two songs on the 12-track album by himself, but his songs have just enough Latin flair, electronic beats and rapping to make each song fun.
Some songs on this album have beats and lyrics from other songs, such as “Have Some Fun” featuring Wanted, The (5) and Afrojack. It uses the chorus from Sheryl Crow’s hit “All I Wanna Do.” And Pit’s “Feel This Moment” (with Aguilera) transforms a-ha’s 1985 hit “Take on Me.”
Hot tracks: “I’m Off That,” “Feel This Moment.”
- LISA BURNETT
Rihanna
Unapologetic
Mercury
D
Rihanna keeps pushing her music to the cutting edge of dance/ pop with adventurous sounds and juxtapositions that continue to exert enormous influence on radio and the dance floor.
The songs of Unapologetic seem to stick to that game plan, until you listen to the lyrics, which are mostly dark, raw, conflicted and laden with complex emotions. The album’s recurring metaphors of damaged bodies and psyches seem to clearly reference the night in 2009 when Chris Brown assaulted Rihanna and its ongoing turbulent aftermath.
Rihanna and Brown’s duet “Nobody’s Business” is particularly unsettling, especially when they sing about how they have a good relationship. That Rihanna can sing a duet with her convicted abuser taints Unapologetic as a kind of self-inflicted psychological abuse. Or cynical self-exploitation. Either way, it makes Unapologetic sad and troubling, something no amount of inventive music can make up for.
Hot tracks: none.
- ELLIS WIDNER
Green Day
Dos!
Warner Bros.
B-
Well, the obvious thing to say about the second installment of Green Day’s ambitious (and hubristic) 2012 album triptych is that it’s a little thin and padded. The band’s legacy might have been better served had they settled for an epic double album rather than going for three separate ones. But that would deprive us of the weirdest song the band has ever recorded, the rap song “Nightlife,” with Lady Cobra, who also earns a titular shout-out on one of the album’s several forgettably rote punk/pop workouts. (The song with the unprintable title represents a new low in lyric writing for a band that has never been very careful about their words.)
There are some highlights, including the retro-garage pop of the lead single “Stray Heart” and the surprisingly unembarrassing Billy Joe solo ode to Amy Winehouse that closes the album. Otherwise, it’s nice that the boys have finally accepted Little Rock’s Jason White as a full-fledged member and it’s always refreshing to encounter unironic aspiration in a modern rock band. Green Day isn’t always great, but no other American rock entity west of Bruce Springsteen so openly courts greatness.
Hot track: “Stray Heart.”
- PHILIP MARTIN
Tift Merritt
Traveling Alone
Yep Roc
C
Tift Merritt has released three studio albums since 2002’s debut, Bramble Rose, and Traveling Alone sounds twice-told and derivative, like Reba McEntire singing Lucinda Williams songs backed by Crazy Horse for an audience of Bryn Mawr undergrads.
Merritt’s vocals are sweet, with a perfunctory whiff of rasp. With lines like, “Day by day, slowly you change, growing into what you are” from“Drifted Apart,” and their logical refrains, “Same things keeping us together, Keep it up we’ll make a wreck of our hearts, No use to shout about it, maybe we’re drifting apart/ Drifting apart.” This is easy listening folk/country. The two “hot tracks” are worth the price of individual downloads.
Hot tracks: “Sweet Spot,” “Still Not Home.”
- BOBBY AMPEZZAN
The Farm
The Farm Inc., Nashville, TN
All In/Elektra
B+
The Farm is a trio of talented souls with solid Nashville, Tenn., resumes (a couple of solo artists join with a former fiddle player for Kenny Chesney) who came together after a songwriting session with producer Danny Myrick. The music The Farm makes struggles to fit in a narrow definition of country - there’s blues-flecked soul (“The Train I’m On”), a clunky dance number (“Farm Party”) and a jazz-scatting happy anthem (“Walkin’”).
This kind of genre-bustin’ is admirable in Music Row, no doubt, but the bouncing around also makes this debut full of peaks and valleys. Still, The Farm has a promising future if country audiences can hang on long enough to let it unfold.
Hot tracks: “Walkin’,” “The Train I’m On.”
- WERNER TRIESCHMANN
Style, Pages 27 on 11/27/2012