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All I want for Christmas…..
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Video game watchdog shuts down, victim of economy
Published on Sunday, May 18, 2008
BROOKLYN'S DON DIVA Foxy Brown
Black Roses/Koch
On April 18, Foxy Brown — who has been arrested several times in the last few years — walked out of the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers Island, the New York City jail, after serving eight months of a one-year sentence for a probation violation.
During that time, she spent 40 days in solitary confinement, and continued to suffer from a hearing problem that has afflicted her since 2005. In video shot just after her release, she alternated between radiance and tears.
As narrative fodder goes, it's fertile material, but unfortunately none of it appears on Brooklyn's Don Diva, her first album in seven years. (The vocals were recorded before jail, and its release was timed to hers.) Instead, there are love notes to drug kingpins and repeated assurances that her not-yet 30-year-old body has aged well.
The production is bargain bin, and lyrically, she sounds leaden: ''I will not retire/Call the fire department to stop the fire/I'm hot as hell.'' Even her flirtations with dancehall reggae, so effective on 2001's excellent Broken Silence, fall flat here, though the young Jamaican crooner DeMarco invigorates She Wanna Rude Bwoy.
A decade ago, Foxy Brown was a firebrand for whom attitude was currency enough. On her debut, a 1996 duet with Jay-Z, she breezily boasted of financially supporting her partner in crime, a Bonnie teaching her Clyde.
Why, this album's only spark, plays like a tragic update. Here Clyde has become too big for his britches and has strayed; Brown sounds convincingly incensed. But she's learning restraint: ''I keeps my cool/Last time I acted the fool/They had your girl front page of the news.'' Rapping well is better revenge.
— Jon Caramanica
New York Times
BROOKLYN'S DON DIVA Foxy Brown
Black Roses/Koch
Get the full article here.
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