All Music Guide - Kelly Rowland, 'Here I Am' Album Review:

Kelly Rowland's third album, following a split with manager Mathew Knowles and label Columbia, is as much of a patchwork as 2007’s Ms. Kelly. There’s an extensive cast of producers and songwriters, as well as a handful of guest MCs. The set aims at the R&B, pop, and dance markets with clear distinctions, so several songs sound like isolated projects rather than pieces of a whole. That said, there is a little more focus on appealing to “hip-hop and R&B” radio. Pre-album single “Motivation” creeps and slinks so efficiently that the Lil Wayne verse and Rowland’s vocal -- apart from “Go, go, go, go” -- are immaterial. The following three tracks straddle pop and R&B with appealingly busy productions, some of Rowland’s most forward and energizing performances, not to mention a high level of arrogance that suits her very well. Those familiar with her guest appearances on French house producer David Guetta's One Love won’t be surprised by the singer’s decision to retain “modern Donna Summer” as one of her modes. “Commander,” produced by Guetta with his typical thump-and-whoosh flair, was released as a single in 2010 and topped the club charts in the U.K. and U.S. The newer “Down for Whatever,” produced by RedOne, Jimmy Joker, and the WAV.s, is a more fractious Euro-dance number that deserves equal attention. Although very eclectic taste is required to appreciate in full, this is clearly Rowland’s brightest, most confident album yet.

http://www.allmusic.com/album/here-i-am-r2228845[

RATING: 4/5 stars; 80/100

The AV Club - Kelly Rowland, 'Here I Am' Album Review:


“Run The World (Girls),” the little-loved lead single from Beyoncé’s latest album, 4, underperformed by any number of measures, but none was more surprising than this: A single from former Destiny’s Child second fiddle Kelly Rowland outshone it. While Beyoncé blustered her way through an overworked pledge of female empowerment, Rowland’s “Motivation” became the summer’s biggest R&B hit by selling the sheer pleasure of mind-blowing, leg-numbing sex. It was the smaller of the two singles, but clearly the more effective, and Rowland clinched it with the most go-for-broke vocal performance of her career, all sensual cries and sex-flushed pleas of encouragement.

Who knew she had it in her? Rowland has typically been one of R&B’s more reserved presences, but on her third album, Here I Am, she sounds positively liberated—it’s as if the same radioactive spider that gave Beyoncé her superhuman confidence finally bit Rowland, too. Driving that new confidence, at least in part, is the record’s shift toward dance music. The producer-driven medium lifts the pressure of having to carry an album by herself—a burden that dogged her ballad-heavy 2002 debut, Simply Deep—and such carefree club songs free her from taking her material too seriously.

Rowland’s usually straight face takes on just the right trace of a smirk during the cheeky, self-directed come-ons of “Feelin’ Me Right Now,” and the singer plays even the proud opener “I’m Dat Chick”—a Beyoncé-esque celebration of self—as a romp, not a mantra. After the monogamy-minded 4, it’s unlikely that Beyoncé will ever make an album so joyfully packed with easy hookups and bottomless shots, but while Mrs. Jay-Z settles into a life of respectability, her old bandmate is relishing her role as the fun single friend.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/kelly...re-i-am,59407/


RATING: B; 75/100

Entertainment Weekly - Kelly Rowland, 'Here I Am' Album Review:

Rowland just might be the Jennifer Aniston of R&B: Years after splitting with an A-list 
partner (in this case, 
ex-groupmate Beyoncé), she's stuck with an underdog rap she doesn't deserve. Her third solo album, Here I Am, proves that Ms. Rowland is doing just fine on her own, thank you; it's a solid if unambitious set of medium-hot finger snappers highlighted by the lusciously slinky top 20 hit ''Motivation'' and the robo-groove of ''I'm Dat Chick,'' on which she brags, ''Yeah, I be the one that they love to mention.'' If she learns to take a few more risks, that may just end up being true. B

Download These:
Instant gay anthem Commander
Cocky come-on Lay It on Me

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20511521,00.html

RATING: B; 75/100

DJ BOOTH - Kelly Rowland, 'Here I Am' Album Review:


The last time we convened to discuss a Kelly Rowland album I had no choice but to talk about the Jordan Effect, in which a star player in their own right becomes historically handcuffed to their even more famous teammate. You can talk about Jordan without bringing up Pippen, but no discussion about Pippen can go for more than a minute without MJ’s name coming up. It was exactly the circumstance that Kelly found herself in with Beyonce, and at the time (circa 2007) it looked like a permanent situation. But - dare I say? - the times have changed.

Whether because Beyonce has distanced herself from her Destiny’s Child days, or because Kelly has increasingly established herself as her own artist or the simple passage of time (probably all three), Kelly’s gone from “the girl next to Beyonce in Destiny’s Child” to “the singer who did Dilemma, Work and Motivation. And oh yeah, remember when she was in Destiny’s Child?” It’s been a long road, on her two previous albums we never felt like we truly knew who Kelly Rowland was as an individual artist, but on her new project, the boldly-titled Here I Am, her creative intentions are starting to become clearer. It’s still a little out of focus, a little hazy, but clearer.

Everyone I know had the same reaction the first time they heard Motivation; damn girl, I didn’t know you could do it like that. We’d heard Kelly flirt before, but we’d never heard her like this. Her breathy, sultry delivery instantly opened the world of babymaker jams to Kelly, a world that was before largely closed to her. Here takes a couple more shots at striking R&B slow jam gold, but the more PG-rated All of the Night doesn’t have the same heat as Motivation; there’s not much sexy about holding your lover tight and whispering in their ear “we’re having some fun in the bedroom,” and unfortunately Rico Love doesn’t deliver the album’s only sub-par guest verse. (We’ll get to that later.) By contrast, while Keep It Between Us is more romantic than lusty, it does contain the subtle emotion that Night lacked – it’s exactly that emotion that I need more of, and she gives it to me on the otherwise bouncing Feeling Me Right Now. It isn’t easy to bring some soul to an uptempo song, but Rowland can pull it off nicely – or at least she does here. We don’t need carbon copies of Motivation, but there’s obviously something on that song that people connected with, and Rowland would be wise to figure out what it was and amplify it.

The rest of Here I Am is divided evenly between made for radio hip-pop anthems and house-influenced dance jams. While you won’t find me sweating at 3AM on the dance floor to David Guetta, I actually prefer Rowland’s club-focused leanings. Commander and Down for Whatever aren’t exactly groundbreaking, but they deliver exactly what the genre demands. Unfortunately the same can’t be said of her radio jams. The Big Sean-assisted Lay It On Me isn’t great, but it’s harmless hip-pop fun, as is the more banging Im Dat Chick. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for Work It Man. There’s really no nice way to say this, it’s terrible. Or more accurately, the beat and Kelly’s hook are fine, but Lil Playy doesn’t belong here. I thought this was a grown, sexy and fun album for the grown and sexy Kelly? Why bring a kid to the party?

For those keeping score at home, that means we’ve got three different iterations of Kelly on the album. The R&B songrstress (Motivation), the hip-pop hook singer (Lay It On Me), and the club queen (Commander), a range that feels a lot more like searching than versatility. Only a writer would notice that the album’s title is Here I Am, not I Am Here, but I’m a writer. While I Am Here is a declaration, Here I Am is a presentation, a submission awaiting approval, and while sometimes a name is just a name, it’s an apt metaphor for the album. While Rowland continues to define her own sound, it still feels like she’s giving us who she thinks we want to hear, not who she is. Of course, that would mean she would have to know who she is, and no one else can help her with that. But I can tell you who she’s not. Kelly Rowland is not Beyonce’s sidekick. Kelly Rowland is now, simply, just Kelly Rowland.


Review by Nathan S.

Nathan S. Picks: Motivation, Keep It Between Us
Radio Ready: Feeling Me Right Now, Turn It Up
Mixtape Ready: Work It Man, All of the Night

http://www.djbooth.net/index/albums/...i-am-07251101/
RATING: 3.5/5 stars; 70/100


The New York Times - Kelly Rowland, 'Here I Am' Album Review:

Kelly Rowland’s Career in Motion: a New Perch
By JON CARAMANICA
Published: July 25, 2011

Kelly Rowland, the former Destiny’s Child runner-up, has approached the problem of her solo career from any number of directions. She’s tried various types of music, collaborated far and wide. This year she’ll be one of the post-Cowell replacement judges on “The X Factor” in England. Most recently she’s become a dance diva, having some of her biggest international success working with the French dance producer David Guetta on “When Love Takes Over.”

Dance music is a great place to hide in plain sight, a world where Ms. Rowland’s presence matters more than her voice, which is sometimes strong but without texture.

Given her recent success and the recent dance-music infestation of the pop and R&B charts, no one would have blamed Ms. Rowland for going whole-hog in that direction on “Here I Am,” her third solo album, and first in four years — it would have been a craven move but an understandable one.

But “Here I Am” is something much more confident and more surprising. It’s a chewy and moody R&B album on which Ms. Rowland sounds assured and vital. Or, at minimum, is made to sound that way.

That’s because Ms. Rowland still doesn’t do much of the heavy lifting here. Her vocals are stacked thick and placed loud in the mix, but while they’re noticeable, they’re not particularly notable apart from their arrangements.

These songs are dense and sinewy and largely move at a furious pace. The exception is “Motivation,” this album’s single, on which Ms. Rowland is appealingly slippery.

Mostly, though, she’s pushed into shouty singing on “I’m Dat Chick” and “Feelin Me Right Now,” which feel like boxing-ring-tough assertions of dominance. Behind her, producers like Rico Love and Tricky Stewart are doing hard work with huge, stinging synthesizers; Rodney Jerkins even sneaks in an unexpected piano run under the guest rap by Lil Playy on “Work It Man.”

The album closes with a pair of dance songs, including another Guetta collaboration, “Commander.” But where this is the direction many singers are heading in, for Ms. Rowland it’s a look back. Unexpectedly, she’s found a way through.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/ar...y-rowland.html

RATING: 70/100

The Boston Globe - Kelly Rowland, 'Here I Am' Album Review:

There’s no ambiguity in the intentions of Kelly Rowland’s third album: She’s out to carve her own place as a dance-pop diva. The former Destiny’s Child member takes inspiration from her smash with David Guetta, “When Love Takes Over,’’ and with the help of her high-profile producers, she heads to the dance floor on most of these tracks. The songs overflow with self-affirmation and confidence. “I’m Dat Chick’’ is all swagger over electro beats, and the turbo-charged “Commander,’’ produced by Guetta, leaves no doubt who’s in charge. Rowland makes up for her limited range with expressiveness throughout. Lil Wayne adds a clever cameo on “Motivation,’’ and the sensual “All of the Night’’ features Rico Love. Since Rowland is trying to define her singularity here, it probably would have been wiser to move away from a rote ballad like “Keep It Between Us’’ and some diagramed arrangements that feature hot MCs like Big Sean or Lil Playy putting punctuations on lyrics. They sound like new iterations of the formula set out for many other female pop and R&B artists. The sentiment behind the pounding groove of “Down for Whatever’’ should have been taken more seriously. (Out tomorrow) KEN CAPOBIANCO

http://articles.boston.com/2011-07-2...n-david-guetta

RATING: 70/100

Rolling Stone - Kelly Rowland 'Here I Am' Review

By JODY ROSEN
AUGUST 2, 2011
"I'm dat chick," crows Kelly Rowland on the opening track of her third album. Is she, though? Rowland has always been dat other chick, unable to shake the shadow of former Destiny's Child co-star Beyoncé. On Here I Am, the title telegraphs the message—ladies and gentlemen, the real Kelly Rowland—but the 2011 model sounds just about the same as the Rowland of Ms. Kelly (2007). She's a strong, agile R&B vocalist who generates little excitement—adept, but not convincing, playing the club diva (in the David Guetta-produced Euro smash "Commander") and the sexual aggressor ("Work It Man"). Rowland is at her best when she's milder, on her Number One R&B/hip-hop hit "Motivation," with Lil Wayne, and the lovelorn ballad "Keep It Between Us." She's not quite dat chick—but not everyone has to be an alpha female, after all.

RATING: 3/5 stars; 60/100

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/al...-i-am-20110802

Slant Magazine - Kelly Rowland, 'Here I Am' Album Review:

BY JESSE CATALDO ON JULY 26, 2011
JUMP TO COMMENTS (0) OR ADD YOUR OWN

Limping into release 16 months after its first single dropped, and only one month after Beyoncé's 4 hit the charts, Kelly Rowland's third album seems doomed to elicit further comparisons between the singer and her former bandmate. This association is furthered by the fact that Here I Am is an ostensible declaration of independence, Rowland's first album away from Destiny's Child's Columbia homebase and without Matthew Knowles as her manager. Yet it's most likely an expression of Beyoncé and Rowland's differing status levels that the two albums have so little in common. Rowland doesn't have the cachet or personality to manage believable assertions of self-love and feminist solidarity, instead forced to vary between mock arrogance ("I'm Dat Chick"), bouncy celebrations of casual sex ("All of the Night"), and wan romantic placeholders ("Keep It Between Us").
The relationship between the two artists, viewed through the lens of album guests and their own appearances elsewhere, sets up a discussion on the fascinating issue of hip-hop's class system. Since her last album four years ago, Rowland has functioned not as much as a substitute for Beyoncé as a flatly defined second-tier voice, a recognizable name with a known history and a presentable image. She lacks an explicit charisma, which makes her guest contributions feel replaceable, an impression that extends to the boilerplate structures of Here I Am. Without an overtly marketable personality or a specific angle, this kind of album relies on guest stars to spice up the menu of uniformly bland, production-heavy tracks, and the ones that appear here serve as indicators of her standing.
The biggest guest is Lil Wayne, showing up perfunctorily on "Motivation" in a bit of self-promotion while his Tha Carter IV remains undelivered, but the impish superstar and his reputed $150k-a-pop fee seems to have left the coffers depleted. The only other voices here are Rico Love (who wrote/produced parts of Beyoncé's I Am…Sasha Fierce, as well as a good portion of this album), David Guetta, and obscure rappers like Lil Playy and Big Sean. This skimpy roster makes Here I Am sound distressingly bare, and depressingly short on surprises and diversion.
Rowland makes up for this by pushing the sex angle, but this pose never seems entirely natural, and clunky lines like "It's going down like a basement" don't make for the most enchanting atmosphere. Guetta's contribution, "Commander," provides a template for what Here I Am should be providing, with Rowland's voice modulated alongside an ebullient 4/4 thump and weird sonic effects. The similarly electronic "Down for Whatever" masks the falseness of the forced sexuality by burying her voice in vigorous synths. Unfortunately, these songs are in the minority, and the inherent blandness of Rowland's persona makes for too much roundly mediocre material.



http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/r...here-i-am/2575

RATING: 2.5/5 stars; 50/100

The Los Angeles Times - Kelly Rowland, 'Here I Am' Album Review:

It’s hard not to feel a little bad for Kelly Rowland. The only singer except Beyoncé to last the entirety of Destiny’s Child’s run, her solo career has had a similarly second-fiddle quality to it — how could it not? But she does herself no favors by choosing consistently bland material, and her third album does nothing to dispel the sense that Rowland should be more selective. There’s a deflated, defensive quality to “Here I Am,” starting with the lead track, “I’m that Chick,” which features her mewling, “I’m not tacky, I just love myself,” and declaring that she’s “putting on a show so you can check me out.”

“Feeling Me Right Now” is about Rowland falling in love with her own reflection in the mirror, an awkward attempt at cleverness that sounds like something forcefully rejected from the last Robyn album. (It’s also confusing — if you don’t pick up on the metaphor, it sounds like she’s singing about picking up a woman at a club. Maybe she’s going for some of those Katy Perry dollars as well?) The secondhand beats and phoned-in guest spots don’t help, either — the nadir might be Lil Wayne on the inaptly titled “Motivation”: “I let her ride/While I drive her crazy.” By the time the album ends with the stomping Euro-cheese “Down for Whatever,” with lyrics as shrugged-off as the title, it’s hard not to want to find Rowland a life coach.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/musi...here-i-am.html

RATING: 1/4 stars; 25/100



METACRITIC SCORE: 68/100 | http://www.metacritic.com/music/here-i-am

Originally posted by Crazytowel 68? I've read so many bad reviews of this.

I've only read like 4 bad reviews of this.

Originally posted by Crazytowel 68? I've read so many bad reviews of this.

Originally posted by Kisuke ctrl + f + someones name pops up way to often

Originally posted by Crazytowel 68? I've read so many bad reviews of this.

Originally posted by Kisuke they will drag it down later.

Originally posted by 1-N-Only21 This is album is awful.

Originally posted by Mean Trees Can someone post some of the negative reviews because I have not read any.

Originally posted by DG1 So what is the LA Times one I Posted

These reviewers -- I couldn't tell if I was reading
an album review of "Here I Am" or "4."
Need to lay off on the mentions.



...Vin

Originally posted by ZimsexZim so that's mixed right?