Brandy feat Kanye West - Talk About Our Love (Atlantic)
UK release date: 14 June 2004
I really had high hopes for this record, which features one of my favourite singers from the recent crop of R&B artists, Brandy, together with this year's breakthrough act Kanye West guesting, and one of the best producers in the game, Timbaland, at the controls. If ever there was a recipe for some serious next level pop this was it.
Sadly the result falls far below such expectations. Instead of a hyper-charged slice of future R&B like Brandy's classic What About Us, we get an insipid middle-of-the-road number that seems to positively strive for blandness. So much so, in fact, that I was tempted to check it wasn't Whitney Houston I'd slipped on by mistake. Sadly it wasn't.
But, luckily for Brandy and her record label, I imagine that when they sat down and planned this record, mapping out their target demographics and such, I was probably notable by my absence on their charts. And I will no doubt be proved, yet again, to be out of touch as this record storms the charts and blights my summer like the braying laughter of a moronic Big Brother contestant.
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