Emancipated from the grip of her former label, JoJo released her first album in 10 years, Mad Love, on Oct. 14. While it’s clear that the 25-year-old singer has returned to the music scene with newfound empowerment, the album ultimately fails to distinguish JoJo as a performer in a time when confidence is a cliched theme of popular R&B music.
Mad Love attempts versatility by utilizing common patterns from EDM music, employing snare rolls and bouncy beat drops. However, this is the album’s central failure, as these songs lifelessly mimic popular house music and detract from JoJo’s vocals. For instance, “Vibe.” attempts to emulate Jennifer Lopez’s sound during the “On The Floor” era, and it ends up resembling a track I’d hear and quickly forget about during a Zumba class.
JoJo is a singer with a scintillating voice and an impressive range, yet the 15-track album showcases this only in its few ballads, often leaving her vocals concealed behind dated overproduction on other tracks. The album’s opener, “Music.” — an ode to Jojo’s love for song and her late father — elicited such high hopes for the rest of the record. But after I continued listening to the release, it was clear that the opening song only set the bar for disappointment, as few tracks sonically push the singer while the majority of the album does not sound current.
“Fuck Apologies.” is a sassy track with a feature from Wiz Khalifa that failed to convince me JoJo has truly moved past the infectious yet predictable bubblegum hooks that were popular when she was relevant in the early 2000s. This feeling is echoed in “Rise Up.,” a redemption anthem that cannot rise up from its lazy lyrics, as JoJo chants “We be going higher/ gonna rise up the love.”
“Edibles.” was the sole track that I felt displayed Jojo’s growth since 2006, as the salacious song captures her sensuality through both its mature lyrical content and a distinct production quality that allowed the singer’s breadth of pitch to be recognized. At worst, the album places JoJo on the same level of a singer such as Ciara, as it emits many feelings of promise, but overall the idea that R&B music of a higher caliber exists. At best, Mad Love has made JoJo emerge as pop music’s newest incarnation of girl power, among the ranks of Demi Lovato or Meghan Trainor.
Thematically, the album moves as a liberation narrative, and while it has its share of personal moments, it falls flat of being the singer’s grand comeback work. JoJo has promise — but she had promise in 2006, and after a decade of waiting, a release that feels serviceable at best does little to earn the singer a permanent seat under the spotlight.
2/4 Shells
