ASHANTI
Braveheart
**
I SHAN’T say much.
ASHANTI is going through what her peers Keyshia Cole, Kelly Rowland and Monica are going through. She is a victim of the dying genre that is R&B.
Braveheart is a far cry from the golden days when she did those amazing songs with Ja-Rule. Having featured the likes of Busta Rhymes and French Montana, you know Ashanti is trying to make this album as hip hoppy as possible. In fact, there are a lot of things on this project that will make you think of Beyonce’s work. Yet Ashanti was big before Beyonce was in the picture, and has nothing to prove.
There are flashes of brilliance on tracks like Never Should Have, a catchy sad love song. If you know about her break-up with rapper Nelly, you get the feeling that he is the subject of this track. If she had followed this direction throughout the project, this album would have been more powerful.
They say R&B is dead, but why are the likes of Emeli Sande and Anthony Hamilton still filling arenas? It’s about believing in your project and your sound, then the rest will follow.
Unfortunately, Ashanti seems uncertain about what she wants to do with her album so there is a lot of experimentation. So much for bravado. – Munya Vomo