MONICA - Still Standing reviews
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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y
| Ew |
 After a four-year break, Monica returns with an assured album that seems entirely unconcerned with staying current. Though Still Standing features circa-now hitmakers like Ne-Yo, the appealingly unflashy CD feels like a return to the mid-'90s heyday of acts such as Deborah Cox and Total. With its old-school Deniece Williams sample, single ''Everything to Me'' looks back even further. A low-key delight....full text |
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| Allmusic |
| Still Standing’s title track was issued as a single weeks prior to Monica’s BET reality series of the same name, which debuted in October 2009. Even though the song is a potent, low-profile anthem akin to a grown-up and feminized spin on T.I.’s “What You Know,” it topped out in the 70s of the R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The album seemed like it might be dead well before release until “Everything to Me” -- based on Deniece Williams' 1981 quiet storm “Silly” -- trailed in February and was in the Top Ten within a month, significantly raising the profile for Monica’s fifth album. Some fans will be irritated that it took Monica three-and-a-half years to follow up a ten-song album with a set of equally brief length, but Still Standing benefits from quality control and a handful of particularly strong ballads. If the album is missing anything, it’s the sharp and casual wrath last dealt in “Sideline Ho.” Instead, we get her singing different lyrics over Evelyn King's similarly cautionary and aggressive “Betcha She Don’t Love You” for “If You Were My Man” (like “Everything to Me,” a collaboration with Missy Elliott and the ever-undervalued Jazmine Sullivan), so it’s really not that much of a problem....full text |
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| Boston |
| Monica’s first effort in four years is bookended by two outstanding tracks, which make the well-produced but predictable songs that come between them pale by comparison. It’s too bad because Monica is a vivid singer with gorgeous tone, but she’s forced to breathe life into songs that don’t live up to her capabilities. Other than the opening title cut and the closing declaration of independence, “Believing in Me,’’ most of this 10-song album doesn’t make much of an impact. Cowritten by Missy Elliott and Jazmine Sullivan (among others), “Everything to Me’’ and the funky “If You Were My Man’’ certainly do hit the mark, though. The problem, like so many R&B discs these days, is that this feels like an assembly-line production (some tunes have four writers) instead of a coherent collection conceived by a singular voice. The good moments are fine. Monica shows her range on the devotional “Superman’’ and gives it some muscle. But a cut like “Mirror’’ is generic and could have been plucked from a bin for any contemporary female R&B vocalist to sing. There’s a wealth of talent involved, no doubt, but Monica is capable of a more consistently satisfying effort. (Out tomorrow)...full text |
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