Ragga-froggy-voiced curioso Sean Kingston is back, and while his latest effort “Fire Burning” might not have the power to distance him from the novelty whispers that will probably always surround him, it’s conveniently armed with a dancefloor-ready charge that’ll surely earn him lots of spins alongside the Lady Gaga, Flo Rida and Black Eyed Peas tunes currently dominating Top 40 playlists.
In need of someone to blame for your inability to break from under “Fire Burning”’s spell? Target producer RedOne, the man behind GaGa’s trio of Top Ten hits. He envelops Kingston’s disinctive growls about some dame’s mesmerizing “birthday cake” (read: ’09’s version of a badonkadonk) in a spirited assault of gleaming synth work and buzzing bass sounds that may come across a bit chintzy when heard while alone, but when heard blaring from the DJ’s speakers while stuck within a mass of drunk and sweaty party-goers, feels like the peaking moment of an excitement-filled Friday night out.
Brandy might have grasped her biggest heaping of critical acclaim with the Timbaland-helmed, state-of-the-art soul of 2004’s Afrodisiac, but it failed to make much noise commercially, becoming her first album not to at least reach the million mark. So it was quite understandable when, for the recently released follow-up Human, she opted on re-teaming with producer Rodney Jerkins since he WAS the man who helped push 1998’s Never Say Never, into becoming the biggest release of her career.
Human jump-off cut “Right Here (Departed)” seemed to be the right choice to plop her back into the R&B/ pop limelight. Radiating with a slick gloss and insistent thump, not to mention the overdubbed wonders of her signature smoky singing and an uplifting lyric that casts her as the bestest pal ever (“When your tears have dried from cryin’/ And the world has turned to silence/ When the clouds have all departed/ You’ll be right here with me”), the song provided a welcome break from R&B’s dominant themes of clubs, booty, sass and heartache.
Alas, probably because it lacked those aforementioned things, it didn’t quite become the monster comeback it was prepped to be, and fizzled out at a modest (at least, for her) peaking of #22 on the R&B chart. So enter Sean Kingston to the rescue, with the hopes that his proven radio-attracting abilities could get this track some tardy boost in interest.
Supplying a brief verse on the front-end, Kingston twists the song to be about chasing after an ex, dropping “Like Kanye/ You’re so ‘Heartless’” followed by the ego-massaging couplet “He can’t do it like me/ Is he from West Indies?”. Not much else about “Right Here” is altered so it makes Sean’s appearance seem a bit pointless (it would have been nice to hear Brandy directly respond to him), but it’ll still be interesting to see if all it took was his small addition to really get this tune scoring some bigger airplay points.
Blame Akon for letting radio programmers think that we crave more wiry-voiced, reggae-based, hip hop-soul crooners. Like the Konvict Music CEO, Sean Kingston has a grating high tenor that shouldn’t be taken in more than quick hook doses. Sadly, his debut single, “Beautiful Girls”, is already shaping up to be an inescapable summer smash but it’ll only take a few listens before you’re begging for mercy, hoping to never hear it again.
It’s biggest fault is that most of it’s appeal falls within the chunky sampling of Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me”, an uber-production mistake that heavily disappoints since it came from producer JR Rotem, famous for making Rihanna and Soft Cell blend so well. The classic soul cut is much too familiar to ever be thought of in a different way, and though Rotem manages to construct a reasonably worthwhile lovers rock riddim out of it, you can’t evade from singing “When the night/ Has come…” as soon as the beat drops, mainly in hopes of droning out the ear-ache that “Beautiful Girls” is.
Kingston’s vocoder-enhanced vocal registers as the most irritating of whines, high-pitched and gender-less, especially as he sings of being suicidal because a puppy love romance, strained from a prison bid, doesn’t seem like it’s gonna work out anymore. His reminiscing of the way things was only makes him sadder (read: more annoying) and the track much more harder to bear. A million Eamon’s would be much more easier to swallow than hearing this soul-sapping trash all season long.
As nice as it is to get free music, think of how much better your soul would feel if you purchased it the old-fashioned way.
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(MP3 posts are for promotional and/ or previewing purposes only; if any artist or their representation wish to have the links removed, contact me and I will happily comply!)
Ragga-froggy-voiced curioso Sean Kingston is back, and while his latest effort “Fire Burning” might not have the power to distance him from the novelty whispers that will probably always surround him, it’s conveniently armed with a dancefloor-ready charge that’ll surely earn him lots of spins alongside the Lady Gaga, Flo Rida and Black Eyed Peas tunes currently dominating Top 40 playlists.
Brandy might have grasped her biggest heaping of critical acclaim with the Timbaland-helmed, state-of-the-art soul of 2004’s 
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