Jason Derulo - Future History (13/10/2011)
Future History is the second offering from Miami born solo artist Jason Derulo, who is currently at the pinnacle of commercial success. This album is suitably well timed after his self titled debut release last year, which produced three chart hits.
Derulo’s proven mass marketability has attracted a smorgasbord of top name producers and songwriters including ‘The Dream’, Claude Kelly, The Fliptones, J.R.Rotem, DJ Frank E, Eman and Kara Dioguardi, who collectively have produced music for artists such as Whitney Houston, Rihanna, Beyonce, Kelly Clarkson, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears, just to name a few.
The album opens strongly with the first two tracks being current releases. ‘Don’t Want To Go Home’ is a catchy electro influenced dance number purpose built for club circulation. The familiarity of this track is lent to crafty sampling of Jamaican folk song ‘The Banana Boat Song’, original version sung by Harry Belfonte in the 1950s.
The second chart release for this year ‘IT Girl’ has unashamedly had its success boosted by the fact that the video clip features actress Tika Sumpter of ‘Gossip Girl’ fame. This soul pop ballad couples simple acoustic chords with a rolling beat and a whistled tune throughout. Derulo is quite a talented singer and shows off his vocal ability, handling each note with ease.
The remainder of the album is a mix of rhythm and blues influenced beats overlaid with pop instrumentals as well as electro sample based dance tracks such as ‘Breathing’ and ‘Make It Up As We Go’. ‘That’s My Shhh’ is an ode to the overtly sexual urban ballad sung a la Prince. The final track ‘Dumb’, a slow song about self doubt and heart break finishes the album in a sombre tone.
It seems that a lot of artists like Derulo, that fall into the rnb/pop genre, tend to follow a trend of sampling other artist’s music. This is prevalent on tracks such as ‘Fight for You’ which works off the keyboard hook and part of the lyric from Toto’s ‘Africa’, as well as ‘Breathing’, which uses piano samples from ‘Pilentze Pee’ written by Krassimir Tsvetano Kurkchiysk.
Another common practice amongst this genre, which Derulo has also used in a couple of his songs, is to self proclaim. This is done by singing or mentioning one’s name at some point during the track.
This album is sure to appease Derulo fans; it shows artist growth and has some decent dance tracks, good for the odd booty shake. It’s an album produced with great effort to achieve commercial success in its genre and no doubt it will do just that.
Nazia Hafiz
Derulo’s proven mass marketability has attracted a smorgasbord of top name producers and songwriters including ‘The Dream’, Claude Kelly, The Fliptones, J.R.Rotem, DJ Frank E, Eman and Kara Dioguardi, who collectively have produced music for artists such as Whitney Houston, Rihanna, Beyonce, Kelly Clarkson, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears, just to name a few.
The album opens strongly with the first two tracks being current releases. ‘Don’t Want To Go Home’ is a catchy electro influenced dance number purpose built for club circulation. The familiarity of this track is lent to crafty sampling of Jamaican folk song ‘The Banana Boat Song’, original version sung by Harry Belfonte in the 1950s.
The second chart release for this year ‘IT Girl’ has unashamedly had its success boosted by the fact that the video clip features actress Tika Sumpter of ‘Gossip Girl’ fame. This soul pop ballad couples simple acoustic chords with a rolling beat and a whistled tune throughout. Derulo is quite a talented singer and shows off his vocal ability, handling each note with ease.
The remainder of the album is a mix of rhythm and blues influenced beats overlaid with pop instrumentals as well as electro sample based dance tracks such as ‘Breathing’ and ‘Make It Up As We Go’. ‘That’s My Shhh’ is an ode to the overtly sexual urban ballad sung a la Prince. The final track ‘Dumb’, a slow song about self doubt and heart break finishes the album in a sombre tone.
It seems that a lot of artists like Derulo, that fall into the rnb/pop genre, tend to follow a trend of sampling other artist’s music. This is prevalent on tracks such as ‘Fight for You’ which works off the keyboard hook and part of the lyric from Toto’s ‘Africa’, as well as ‘Breathing’, which uses piano samples from ‘Pilentze Pee’ written by Krassimir Tsvetano Kurkchiysk.
Another common practice amongst this genre, which Derulo has also used in a couple of his songs, is to self proclaim. This is done by singing or mentioning one’s name at some point during the track.
This album is sure to appease Derulo fans; it shows artist growth and has some decent dance tracks, good for the odd booty shake. It’s an album produced with great effort to achieve commercial success in its genre and no doubt it will do just that.
Nazia Hafiz