Track Review ⊙ Daily Ops Home
Cassie :: "M & U"From Cassie (Bad Boy; 2006)
I thought Chamillionaire was unloving and unlovable. I thought his goon mug, caviar eyeballs and workman flow indicative of a soulless creature born for grumbling noises and cancerous hooks. Cassie makes Chamillionaire look like Sidney Poitier.
“Me & U” wields a beat close to hotness, but chalk it up to dumb luck. Over nothing 808 drums, simplistic key parts waywardly mingle, each tinkle and warble coolly individual but coincidentally compatible. Thick, bottom-heavy buzzes broil the mix, and that’s the hit-maker right there. It sure as shit isn’t Cassie. Her voice doesn’t slink, it sleeps; it’s not reserved, it’s hollow; don’t flatter the inanimate with “robotic.” Cassie’s image is a manufactured lump of urban nymph pastiche, her persona a blank-faced, disaffected wink. If that’s sexy, then sexy’s in a sad state.
People can dance to this track, but it’s a bit like trying to groove to those song beginnings in Dancer in the Dark, where spirit has yet to transform noise and machinery into music. Cassie’s a damn sight short on Bjork powers; instead of transporting us out of the factory, her listless, lifeless come-ons just make us all the more aware that a factory is her stage.
Chet Betz :: 30 June 2006 |
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