Ashanti - 'Don't Let Them'

Released on 06/06/05
Label: The Inc

In a plummeting hot air balloon laden with female US R&B singers, it would be hard to come up with one good reason not to chuck Ashanti off first.

She doesn't have tunes - she has tedious jams put together for her by chunky gangsta bean-counters who like their women suppliant, sweet and barely audible. She doesn't have attitude - she has a pathetic desire to please her employers and people eating frozen yoghurt in Florida drive-thrus. This, the second single from the album "Concrete Rose", is a silky smooth and thoroughly leaden ballad produced by Inc supremo Irv Gotti, who evidently just set the mixing desk on auto pilot before nipping out to get a mini-statement.

In it, the face of Herbal Essences addresses a no-good beau and demands he stays within a five-feet radius at all times. Honestly, it's all me-me-"me-ee-ee-yeah-ehhh". Quick, you get her legs and we'll get her arms.

I think he was being kind.