Review Summary: Little Jackie's debut is witty and retro-flavored
One wouldn't expect a duo consisting of a 90's one-hit wonder and a no-name producer to make a great album, but Little Jackie does just that. Between Imani Coppola's biting lyrics and cool, collected voice and Adam Pallin's 60's & 70's-inspired compositions, "The Stoop" is one of the best debuts of recent memory.
First, the backstory: Imani Coppola hit it big with "Legend of a Cowgirl" in 1997. The song was a Top 40 hit in the US and the UK, but her follow-up single, "I'm a Tree," was a commercial disaster. Shortly thereafter, Coppola ditched her record label and began releasing creative but unsuccessful independent albums. Now, she's back, and in a just world her return would have been indefinite.
Much of "The Stoop" could be considered a concept album, the concept being mocking flawed women. On "28 Butts," Coppola plays the part of a girl who's "smoking like a chimney" and downing whiskey by the bottle, but wishes for something better... she just doesn't want to exert the effort ("Hey, Mama, are you proud of me/I applied for a job at Mickey-D's"); on "Black Barbie," her role is a famous socialite who reaps benefits from her mistakes; and on "Cryin' for the Queen," she takes aim at a singer (likely Amy Winehouse) who has a "druggy routine" and is impaired by various substances. In other places on the album, she offers advice on how to keep a man, as on the Dee-lite soundalike "The Kitchen," or how to bust an unfaithful man's tryst, on the text abbreviation-littered "LOL."
It's not only critique that Coppola excels at on the record, though. She accentuates the positives of living in the 'hood on the title track, and tells of her family's devotion to one another on "Go Hard or Go Home." She even gets around to mocking herself on "The World Should Revolve Around Me," a delightfully narcissistic breakup tune in which Coppola fully recognizes her immaturity ("What came first/The chicken nugget or the egg McMuffin?") and embraces it full-on.
Another of the album's strong points is its obvious influences: 60's girl-groups and 70's R&B. Coppola's choruses occasionally sound harmonized, as on "Cryin' for the Queen" (perhaps the girl-group sound there is to further reference Amy Winehouse), and elsewhere, the strings swell and swing; "The World Should Revolve Around Me" sounds as if it came from the 70's. All in all, the record sounds ready for a 1970s New York block party.
"The Stoop" blends biting social critique with tongue-in-cheek fun and lessons in optimism, three things that are as handy now as they were when the record came out.
