Send "Queen Latifah " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Billboard |
 Queen Latifah's new studio set, "Persona," represents a turn away from her '00s work. But it's not quite the return to rap that it's been billed as. About half of the album finds the successful singer/actor making the kind of pop-inflected R&B once heard from En Vogue or SWV. (One track, "With You," even treads into disco, complete with an Auto-Tuned "Believe"-style vocal from Latifah.) Cool & Dre handled the bulk of the album's production, setting the star's vocals against head-nodding beats that come reasonably close to more youthful urban-radio fare. "Hard to Love Ya," with a rather humdrum cameo from rapper Busta Rhymes, summons a bit of Rihanna's authoritative sass, and The Neptunes appear on the reggae-grooved "If He Wanna." But the highlight is "Fast Car," where Latifah and Missy Elliott channel the goofy exuberance of OutKast's "Hey Ya!" --Mikael Wood...full text |
| Latimesblogs |
| On her seventh studio album, "Persona," Jersey-born rapper-singer-actress and Cover Girl and Jenny Craig spokeswoman Queen Latifah, with the help of producers Cool & Dre, updates her sound to include everything du jour: autotune-tinged techno banger with Missy Elliott, bottle-service electronica, mellow reggae with Jamaican singer Serani and club-soul for the working girls. While the production is attentive and her effort to remain timely is appreciated and attuned, "Persona" still feels like a missed opportunity. It's understandable why Latifah would want to return to hip-hop, the breeding ground of her personal style, but it's jazz that's guided Dana Owens' best efforts. Even her biggest hip-hop single, "U.N.I.T.Y.," borrowed the foundation of its cool progressivism from a Jazz Crusaders loop. More recently, her 2004 set of standards "The Dana Owens Album," and its Grammy-nominated follow-up, "Trav'lin' Light," earned Latifah her biggest raves. Critics fell for her silk scarf of a voice as it fluttered through smoky jazz numbers, while reworking the songs enough to uncover new pressure points....full text |
| Boston |
| Queen Latifah puts the torch songs aside and aims at burning up the clubs with this set of tuneful, briskly executed songs, almost exclusively produced by the superb Cool & Dre. It’s a somewhat odd disc, though, as many of these tracks could have been sung by any contemporary one-named club diva. The difference is that Latifah can actually sing. What she doesn’t do is show quite enough of that charm and attitude that have made her an icon of self-empowerment and queen of various media. Only a few songs, including the reflective “People’’ with Mary J. Blige wailing the hook, and “Over the Mountain’’ show some real introspection and depth. Latifah does very little rapping, and when she does it’s rudimentary stuff. She does shine on the defiant “Long Ass Week,’’ though....full text |
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