1. Chance Howard plays on most of the songs.

2. Lenny Kravitz plays on several of the songs.

3. The first song features Chance, Lenny AND Wendy Melvoin.

Anxiety said:

The new songs didn't knock me out when I saw her perform them opening for Lenny a few weeks ago in Minneapolis.

to be honest, i haven't heard the new album yet - i just bought it this afternoon on the way to work and thumbed through the liner notes on the bus. i've been looking forward to this album, but i gotta say that the last one was pretty patchy in my opinion. there are a few songs on it i like a lot, but i hit the skip button a lot on it.

Anxiety said:

oh my god, this came out already?

and no lisa ehh?

i think it just came out today...though when i went to beast buy to pick it up today, not only was it NOT on sale, but there was only one stinkin' copy of it available, and it wasn't even on display with the other new stuff.

Anxiety said:

The CD is pretty good, but I don't see Lenny being a big reason to buy it...he's mediocre. I want to see Nikka, but I do not want to pay for a poser like Lenny.
The other reasons to hear the cd are valid.

Those, and the full spread pic in the insert...ala "The Beautiful Experience" butterfly effeect.

I bought Nikka's CD at Virgin for $11.99 yesterday and listened to it last night. I didn't look at the liner notes (only the pics) and just wanted to hear the songs without snooping too much behind the scenes first so all the guests mentioned here were a surprise to me.

It's pretty good overall. Initially my expectations were very high because the first album really grew on me to a point where I love it almost from start to finish, but then I read a horrible review in 'Entertainment Weekly' (a 'D') and was really wary. Fortunately, it's nowhere near as bad as they said it was, sure she may oversing at times, but the grooves are cool and I can see myself liking it more with repeated listens. Same scenario as her first album.

i listened to it this morning. i like it better than the last one, but she's not quite "there" yet with a killer album full of solid material. the first track is great - not the strongest melody in the world, but full of funk and energy - and after that the record feels like it slowly tapers off into the depths of filler...but less painfully so than on her last album. and no segues this time!

i had high hopes for this album after the first three or four tracks - the first quarter of this album reminds me a lot of the glory days of paisley park side projects...jill jones, sheila e's third album, the better moments of the first mazerati album...for a bit, i was taken back in time to 1987 and had that same feeling of creature comfort as i did when i was surrounded by all of prince's second-tier musical enterprises. i was excited that maybe all of that output from the purple 'glory days' might actually find its way into an established sound or sense of nostalgia by artists like nikka trying to cop what it must have been like to put together an album like one of prince's mid-80s side projects. then, around the halfway point of the album, it slid into a generic "look how old-skool i am" limbo, and the second half of the album completely went in one ear and out the other. maybe with more listens, i can salvage some good moments from those songs. or maybe not.

i've seen that the critics have not been kind to this album. entertainment weekly wasn't thrilled with it, and time out chicago turned its nose up at it as well. and i can kinda get what they're saying - it's kinda contrived, kinda trying to hard to be retro and neo-soul, it kinda has a knock-off lenny kravitz feel to it, it sounds like beer commercial music or something you'd play at a barbecue...yeah, i hear all that in the album. but i think the girl has a lot of promise, and it shows here and there throughout the album, and i really like the list of musicians who collaborated on this album (i can even tolerate lenny being on the album, as much as i'm kinda indifferent to him these days). i think if she tried less to be part of the neo-soul/retro-funk 'scene' and threw in something fresh and unusual into the mix, she could really explode. she's got the energy, she's got the pipes, she's got the looks. she just needs to figure out what to do with it all. i'm not convinced she's reached that destination yet. but as much as she's trying to fit a certain mold, at least it's not so horribly insulting and manufactured that she could be lumped in with the lohans and the ashlees and that whole crowd. there's a desire for originality in what she does - i just look forward to that originality becoming more fully realized, i 'spose.

not bad. not great.

I just listened to the album again here at work. I love the muted sounds on the last track. I don't know if I would have picked them up without headphones.

It's too bad Nikka's NYC show in two weeks was cancelled. Now I have to take my ticket back for a refund. Or I could trade it in for another show at the same venue. I'm debating among Mindless Self Indulgence, The Bravery or Tegan And Sara.

word around the Nikka camp is that Prince plays guitar on "Around the World" uncredited.

psykosoul said:

wouldn't surprise me at all. i had a few 'gotta be prince' moments listening to that album.

Anxiety said:

i got it..i got it..but havent opened it yet..

hey abe laberiol jr plays drums on this...awesome and sweet guy.....

I just listened to it again at work. It's growing on me already.

and no lisa coleman..




and only one wendy melvoin track..wow.....but some john blackwell and abe..

so im happy..hope the wendy and lisa tracks see the light of day some how...

how did i miss john blackwell's name in the credits?

sosgemini said:

do you know the name of the tracks they did?

psykosoul said:

no..it was part of the first album that she ended up scraping.....if the critics think she was trying to hard i wonder what that first set of songs sounded like.

sosgemini said:

I've got the first version of the album and there's a track called "The Last Time" that sounds very GirlBros-ish. In my opinion the first draft of this album was so much stronger than the released version.

psykosoul said:

oh my god oh my god oh my god...

its my understanding that the girls are all over the first draft...

psykosoul said:

Okay, "hypothetically" speaking , where could one find the first draft of this CD? I was jazzed when "Don't Think We've Met" came out last year - then the original CD was scrapped. Any help in locating this would be appreciated.

At any rate, I'm still really diggin' alot of stuff on the "official" new CD. There's one line in particular on the first track that is sung as if she's channeling Prince. I mean, it's a perfect moment. Come to think of it, there's a whole lot of his influence on this album. (Though nothing as obvious as the "Don't Think We've Met" track that was left off this CD for some reason).

Later...

If its not 2 much trouble could someone post the song titles they play on? Lenny, John Blackwell, Wendy, and Chance Howard, thanx! Also what songs are missing from the 1st version of the album and which ones made it?
[Edited 5/26/05 16:07pm]

sosgemini said:

i thought that lisa was involved in part of the album but i read somewhere that rumor was it didn't work out for some reason.

Y'all are crazy. Nikka's latest ROCKS! As did her show at The Roxy here in Hollywood a few nights back. More energy live and on disc than anything from the Purple camp in years.

nikka is on leno tonight, btw.

CALM DOWN ISAIAH CALM DOWN

.....woooh....



Ok..is the one song on there the one song that was funky I heard !!!?????

suomynona said:

thanks.. get those DVD-Rs out!

Wow, that was fast...

I gotta take a listen to this, if I can...

i've heard rumours prince is on 'around the world'