No One Hit Wonder

Entitling your album Voice Of The Young People doesn’t exactly suggest a shy and retiring personality.

Add to that the fact you’re a pink-track suited eighteen year old, it certainly sets you up as an easy target. However, I’ll try and resist the temptation.

While my finger is pretty far from the pulse of the youth market, it’s not unreasonable to assume that anyone who makes catchy tunes extolling the virtues of high-street beauty products will appeal to the mindset of your average vacuous fifteen year old, of which there are plenty.

Lil Mama already did that, on last year’s jaunty single Lip Gloss, in which some nerdy schoolgirl became hip with the cool kids after applying the titular fashion accessory. Not exactly Fight The Power, but to sniff derisively at the content basically misses the point. It was, and still is, utter nonsense, but that never got in the way of a decent pop tune. (“Get it on / bang a gong / get it on”, anyone?)

However, not everything here is geared directly towards the Claire’s Accessories demographic. L.I.F.E, for example, is a pretty gritty tale of a childhood spent in foster care, which has a vague Missy Elliott vibe about it. One Hit Wonder is a self-aware dig at pop’s shelf life, albeit with a slightly self-deprecating title – after all, the mildly infectious single Shawty Get Loose, in collaboration with Chris Brown and T-Pain, is her second Billboard Top 10 hit Broken Field may not be the greatest vehicle for her vocals, but it has a throbbing blues pulse to it, at least highlighting a decent enough range and awareness that suggests that Lil Mama may transcend the stigma that inevitably comes with being a teenager in the pop music biz.

The overall problem with Voice Of The Young People is that it isn’t just the one voice: hopping from glossy lips to “crack fiend” mothers gives the album a disjointed, almost schizophrenic feel.