Review Summary: You're way too beautiful Sean, that's why it'll never work. You'll have me suicidal, suicidal when you say "fire burnin fire burnin on tha daaaayunce flow".
If you really think about it, the musical concepts of fusing reggae music with pop, electronic beats, and throwing in a pop punk feature by a different band could create quite the interesting musical experience. Unfortunately, Sean Kingston isn’t the artist that should be creating this music. In fact, some might argue that he shouldn’t even be in the music business at all. This album, not unlike his first album, is a testament to his failure as a quality artist.
The thing that you probably know about this album without listening to the entire thing would be all of the singles that were released from it. “Fire Burning”, “My Girlfriend”, “Face Drop”, and “Wrap U Around Me” were all released as fairly successful singles. Sadly enough, none of these songs are very good at all. “Fire Burning” manages to be one of those singles that you can’t help but get stuck in your head. The downside to that is that Sean Kingston can’t actually sing. If you’ve ever seen a live video of him (or God forbid, actually have gone to see him live) when he isn’t using auto-tune to make himself sound better, then you probably already know that Kingston cannot actually sing very well at all. Another fun fact about Sean Kingston, he was born and raised in the United Sates. He isn’t actually Jamaican like he would like you to believe, but instead he relies on adjusting his vocal style into an obnoxious drawl that sends even the most brave listeners running for the hills. Overall, none of the other singles are worth a listen either unless you desire a song about females and currency, in which case I would tell you to look elsewhere because those songs have been done better by other bands.
Which leads me into the lyrics. Sean Kingston, as with many other things, does not have a way with words. His lyrics are all discussing the topics of women or as he calls them, “shawtys”. He also oftentimes decides to throw in a little bit about his bling. The first example I call to the stand, would be a little quip from the song “I’m At War”.
“Young mula baby! I’m at war / Fighting for the one I love and the one I truly need / I’m at war/ Shawty I take a bullet for you cause you mean the world to me / I’m at war. / Me love you girl / you lovin me/ so don’t fight it girl cause it was meant to be/ me feel like I’m in the army / cause to be wit you that’s what my heart wanna be/ It’s like I’m bout to die just to get with you/ feel like your putting me through World War II”. Obviously, these aren’t the most interesting lyrics or the most poetic confessions of love a man has ever said to a woman through song. In fact, the use of “shawty” could be considered a tad bit dehumanizing which makes me think that Kingston should either refrain from sexist remarks himself or have someone else write lyrics for him, either of which would suffice for now. The song “Fire Burnin” also features some interesting lyrical content that I feel is an important theme throughout the album.
“She got it pop it lock it drop it that birthday cake / Got a candle need to blow that crazy flame away / Take my red, black card and my jewelry/ Shawty is cool like the fire / cool like fire”. Auto-tune isn’t the only thing that this album is drowning in. Pitiful lyrics such as the two noted can be found anywhere and everywhere on this album, which really drag down the experience also.
Have you ever wondered what a frog croaking sounds like when it is auto-tuned? Enter guest star, Weezy. During the first song “I’m at War” he manages to make the opening song an absolute sh
itfest, not that it isn’t lowering the standards much farther than Kingston had them for himself. A conclusion that I have come to is that Kingston is actually worse when other people collaborate with him which is quite shocking. Another artist that helps out Kingston on this album would be none other than Joel Madden from Good Charlotte in a song that sounds more like it belongs on a Disney Channel star’s album than a more respectable pop artist’s. “Shoulda Let U Go” ends up being just as flat and predictable as any other song on the album, only this one has an auto-tuned punk pop anthem which sounds like it was ripped off of a Green Day album and then over produced. Every other song that I have not mentioned yet could easily be classified as filler because there is nothing else that really happens on the album except for Sean trying to recreate a single as big as “Beautiful Girls” ended up being.
Overall, this is quite the album. A physical copy would be useful for a coaster, a makeup kit, a picture frame, or you could convert the case into a desktop planner and write kooky sh
it all over it. If you had a digital copy of this, I suppose that you could spread some cool viruses to all the people downloading this. Then again, they’re probably just looking to get the singles off of the album. I’d give this a 1 for musicianship since there is none present, and I’ll add a .5 for making somewhat catchy but entirely obnoxious dance club hits.
