Y’know I never thought I’d say it, but either this hot hip-hop-chicks-shaking butt-flossed-booty-all-in-ya face routine is getting old, or I am. A nocturnal stroll through the blue neon urban R&B arcade leaves the accidental tourist peering in exhibitionistic windows with pupils dilated in incomprehension at the audacity of the latest acts on parade. Every year there’s another x added to x-rated. And like a great man once said, what does that leave us – girls without skin? I mean, does anyone do demure anymore?
This is not to advocate a return to Dev’s vision of what constitutes hot, merely to indicate that the subtext, sur-text and every other text of 18 year old Atlanta resident Ciara’s US platinum debut album is designer sex, both of the denied and accessed variety. Which would be fine – fuck, no, it’d be great – except it hasn’t quite seeped into the beats.
Goodies fails to live up to the three or four highlights frontloaded at the album’s fore. The finest of these is the title tune, whose refusal to put out – a sort of ‘Milkshake’ turned on its head – is inversely proportional to the suggestive and slinky beat, G-thang bleeps and bloops, twangy guitar and virtuoso vocal. Ditto ‘1, 2 Step’ with its pitch shifting synths and bits of Missy in the mix. But even at that, the good stuff is only half good. ‘Lookin’ At You’ has a phat-bottomed waddle at its rhythmical spine, but otherwise the track does little but reiterate Snoop’s shizzle-stick tropes – bling without the bong. Equally, ‘Hotline’ rejoices in dampened-down handclaps and stilted rhythms that are a tad more alluring than the silicone valleyed Brummie brunettes you get soliciting mobile numbers on the after-11 satellite channels (anthropological research, honest), but still manages to fall foul of dire cliché at every hurdle. Does an attractive young lady throwing male fantasy corn-porn shapes in a post ironic baby-I-gotcha-money stylee constitute female empowerment? Answers on a g-string please.
For the most part, the problem with Goodies is not that it’s hardcore or softcore but no-core at all. Behind all the raunch, it’s more about cellphones and flash cars than flesh. It doesn’t know whether to play coy (‘Next To You’ featuring R. Kelly), start planning for a traditional wedding or get it on, ending up beached somewhere between panty-flashing panto and adult bump-and-grind burlesque, between Christina’s ribald squat thrusts and the cutesy wink fantasies hinted at by Beyoncé. It’s a little like J-Lo with more vocal range, or a Vanity 6 album without the Prince. In other words, somebody’s high-concept notion of sexmusic for the penthouse rather than the pavement.
Like a cut-price lap-dance, bad head or a botched handjob, Goodies aggravates more urges than it alleviates, leaving the listener with a palpable – if not palpitating – ache. Give me the blood-curdling passion of a Chavela Vargas any day. Now that’s raw.