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Album: Cassie - 'Rock-A-Bye Baby' (mixtape)
Member Since: 8/16/2011
Posts: 4,850
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After a 7 year hiatus from the music scene Cassie has returned with her highly anticipated mixtape 'RockaByeBaby'.
Anyone who thinks of Cassie will remember 'Me & U' and 'Long Way To Go', sweet R&B songs that had a subtle hint of attitude. Now that's all changed. That sweetness has been removed in favour of a full blown bad-ass attitude that's reflected in every single song.
The mixtape starts off letting us know straight away that this isn't the young Cass we're used to. She is 26 now after all. Love has been substituted for more explicit topics as we hear her sing with Wiz Khalifa about how her man has her "shaking like a pair of dice". 'Addiction' hears her comparing her love to a drug habit as all she says she wants to do is, "Lay my body next to yours/You got me/Addicted to your love". 'I Love It' continues with that theme as she boasts about her skills in the bedroom to Fabolous who agrees that, "Me and you make hot ****".
Don't worry though she does sing about more than that. Her topics of choice range from drugs to the high life back to dollar bills and being at the top of her game. She's got that bad-bitch attitude down to a tee. The title track 'RockaByeBaby' lets us in on just how good Cass has it at the moment, "We be shining like a diamond that your money can't buy". She even brings that sultry voice down to a growly rap telling us "I already got that cane with the crown". On top of her game she may be, but she still needs someone to take care of her which is where 'Take Care Of Me Baby' comes in. No matter how crazy it gets or how high she gets that she's "way out of space" she still needs someone who's "down in the sky".
There are two major highlights on the mixtape. The first being the Rick Ross assisted 'Numb'. In a trance-like state Cassie croons "I make music to numb your brain" before the slow, laid back beat kicks in while she half raps, half sings in the only way that she can do. Rozay adds his two pence and unsurprisingly contributes to the continuous boasting, agreeing with Cass that "When I make the wave you ride it". It has a sort of mellow, hypnotic effect that stays with you long after the song has finished.
The other highlight is 'Bad Bitches' that features Ester Dean. The anthemic beat and subject matter are sure to get people going and chanting "Where the bad bitches at?/Where the bad girls go?/Bad bitches to the floor". It's empowering in a roundabout way that Beyonce might not be so fond of.
Throughout the mixtape we hear snippets from the 1991 movie 'New Jack City: Gunshots'. The sound of gunshots and that menacing laugh we hear in the 'Intro' provide the backdrop to 'RockaByeBaby' adding to the darker, street vibe of the whole thing.
The mixtape finishes with 'All My Love' that rounds it off perfectly. It brings us back to reality and sounds like something that would have featured on the 2006 self-titled Cassie album. If you like that old familiar feel then skip back to 'Sound Of Love' with Jeremih and you won't be disappointed.
There's an impressive line-up of collaborators sprinkled throughout including Rock Ross, Meek Mill, Wiz Khalifa, French Montana, Pusha T and a couple more. Cassie is doing what every artist wants to do and that's making music to suit her own tastes and not what's popular at the moment. Even though most of these songs might not get radio airplay - especially 'Do My Dance' thanks to those lyrics! - they're still worth talking about and listening to over and over again.
If this is what she does on a mixtape then who knows what a whole album will bring.
It's like she says "A bad bitch get it".
Listen to Cassie's 'RockaByeBaby' below and download it here.
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DROPOUTUK Another great review 
Numb its universal praise 
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Member Since: 10/18/2009
Posts: 18,756
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She should either release numb or paradise to tha radio, then release it on iTunes.
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Member Since: 10/13/2005
Posts: 18,646
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Almost 200k downloads 
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Member Since: 8/16/2011
Posts: 4,850
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Originally posted by Kh-Loud
She should either release numb or paradise to tha radio, then release it on iTunes.
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Yeah I agree.she should promote them both
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Member Since: 3/25/2010
Posts: 2,278
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all of this acclaim of of a mixtape imagine what the album will do. 
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Member Since: 1/9/2011
Posts: 50
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I didnt like it at first. I didnt know she was bout that life. But it has grown on me I used to stan so hard for her back then my stanning has reignited.
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Member Since: 1/9/2011
Posts: 50
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is there a site with all the lyrics?
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Member Since: 10/13/2005
Posts: 18,646
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Member Since: 8/16/2011
Posts: 4,850
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Quote:
Once upon a time, people hated Cassie. In 2006, she was a 19-year-old model-turned-singer whose big single, “Me & U,” may or may not have been about blowjobs. After a couple of notoriously bad TV performances of the song, some joker started an online petition saying that Diddy should drop her from Bad Boy, and it got thousands of signatures. I’m not exactly sure what the people signing that petition wanted. Cassie was clearly never going to be Mary J. Blige; her voice is a thin, conversation coo, one that she never attempted to push into gospel histrionics or Mariah-esque runs. She was never an R&B singer anyway; her music tended toward hovering-spacecraft dance-pop. “Me & U” stands as a particularly stark and excellent example of the form, a perfectly crafted wisp of a pop song that’s aged better than just about any of the other singles coming out at that moment. And it wasn’t a fluke; the self-titled album that “Me & U” called home had three or four songs that were nearly as sublime. Cassie’s still on Bad Boy, but those chumps with the petition got their way in another sense; since that album, Cassie hasn’t released a full-length. She’s released a ton of singles since then, and earlier this year, some fan cobbled together more than 60 unreleased tracks and soundtrack cuts and non-starter singles, compiling them into an unauthorized triple-mixtape. That thing is full of gold, and Cassie herself has said that its existence helped push her to finish RockaByeBaby, her first full-length in seven years. It was worth the wait. We might not get a better mixtape, in any genre, this year.
For her entire career, Cassie has been turning the things that detractors hated about her — her thin voice, her sexed-up delivery — into assets. She’s maybe our purest post-Aaliyah singer, sinuously sliding her whispery voice through spare, echoing tracks like it always belonged there. There’s a druggy, deadpan flirtatiousness in her voice that reminds me of nobody so much as Nancy & Lee-era Nancy Sinatra. That’s always been there, but RockaByeBaby is the moment she turns those things confrontational, when she becomes an absolute badass. The tape’s cover is Cassie’s face, blowing smoke from a gold-plated pistol. Throughout, snatches of dialogue from New Jack City bubble to the surface, like they’ve been underneath it the whole time and they’re just fighting for moments to push their way through. These are rapper moves, not pop-singer moves. And before Rick Ross thunders his way onto “Numb,” Cassie gives what amounts to her mission statement: “I make music to numb your brain.” She’s not wrong; every track on RockaByeBaby hits with layer upon layer of woozy, disorienting force.
The mixtape that RockaByeBaby immediately made me think of was the Weeknd’s debut House Of Balloons; it’s got that same sinister, debauched chill to it. Cassie’s got that same predatory, almost threatening sexuality in her voice, but she sounds in control in ways that Abel Tesfaye rarely does. And Tesfaye’s collaborators liked to sample drifting, diffuse indie bands like Beach House. Cassie doesn’t play that. RockaByeBaby has familiar tracks, but they’re hard, minimal, haunted rap beats: 2 Chainz’ “Got One,” Kendrick Lamar’s “m.A.A.d. City.” Frequent Chief Keef collaborator Young Chop turns up to produce “Turn Up,” and it’s an early indicator that the monolithic menace of his sound can support more than just Chicago children threatening to kill you, the same way that Ciara’s “Goodies” once showed that Lil Jon had more to him than fight music. And when Cassie sings alongside the slick, assured R&B lothario Jeremih on “Sound Of Love,” she dominates the track even if she’s the less technically sound singer. And though the tape’s songs waft pleasantly into the background, there’s a hard-eyed strut in Cassie’s voice even when she’s professing love and vulnerability; she sounds like she’s turning Jeremih into jelly.
RockaByeBaby is one of those mixtapes that absolutely could’ve been proper albums if someone had decided to release them to a paying public. It’s got the sort of hard, polished mastering job that more mixtapes should have, and a ton of big-name rappers come through to pay respects, delivering the sorts of verses that rappers tend not to use for throwaway projects. Fabolous might be better than any rapper in history at the drop-in R&B guest verse, and he’s absolutely unflappable on “I Love It.” For the first time in a while, Wiz Khalifa sounds totally engaged and present on “Paradise”; apparently, it just took a song like this to knock him off autopilot. On “Turn Up,” Meek Mill is pure adrenaline; I love the way he yips “Murder scene! Murder scene!” And on “Do My Dance,” Too Short contributes a verse of such surpassingly assholistic panache that I subliminally memorized it almost immediately: “Turn your bitch into some work and make her squiiiirt / If you knew what she was doing, you’d be huuuuurt.” Cassie, then, is sharing space with some huge personalities, all of them bringing their A-game. But the tape still sounds like it belongs entirely to her, like it’s being beamed directly from a world of her creation. If those rappers all stepped their game up just to impress her, you can see why.
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STEREOGUM
Mixtape of the week,great review for her again.
Lana del rey getting props for the Trilogy
Go Cassie ...Go Cassie
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Member Since: 10/13/2005
Posts: 18,646
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Quote:
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She’s released a ton of singles since then, and earlier this year, some fan cobbled together more than 60 unreleased tracks and soundtrack cuts and non-starter singles, compiling them into an unauthorized triple-mixtape. That thing is full of gold, and Cassie herself has said that its existence helped push her to finish RockaByeBaby, her first full-length in seven years. It was worth the wait. We might not get a better mixtape, in any genre, this year.
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I knew the impact the trilogy would have!
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Member Since: 3/25/2010
Posts: 2,278
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Lonely Disco Ball her impact.
i can't with all these amazing reviews. 
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Member Since: 8/16/2011
Posts: 4,850
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Though the attention being paid to futuristic R&B has been more prevalent than ever in the past two years, it's also been interesting to look back on the ways the sound did exist in years prior. And even more exciting to see some of those artists making comebacks.
Miguel's Kaleidoscope Dream was one of last year's better albums, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't tempt me to dust off my copy of FutureSex/LoveSounds. And only a few months after doing that? Boom: The 20/20 Experience. Another thing I went back to last year was Cassie's only album -- her 2006 self titled debut -- specifically it's opening track/huge hit, "Me & U." The thick bass and airy vocals of that track are way more similar to the post-Weeknd world of R&B than I remembered, and it more than holds up.
Cassie had been dropping some singles here and there since her '06 album, but almost seven years later, there was still no sign of another full length release. However, like JT did in March, Cassie ended her lengthy absence last week with the release of her free mixtape, RockaByeBaby. It might be "just a mixtape" (whatever that really means at this point anyway), but RockaByeBaby serves as a worthy followup to Cassie, and as a whole release, it might even be better. The album is stacked with guest appearances (Jeremih, Pusha T, Fabolous, Meek Mill, Too $hort, and others) and the producers are no slackers here either (Mike Will Made It, Young Chop, and more), but it's not over-saturated with guests. Even the verses from some of the weaker rappers (Wiz Khalifa) work pretty well here. And some of the samples used are noticeably big songs (Kendrick Lamar's "m.A.A.d City," Tyga's "Do My Dance"), which can be a turnoff, but she uses them well.
Overall, the thing really feels like an album. Too often with mixtapes I find myself filtering through 20-something songs for the 10 good ones, but RockaByeBaby has no fat to trim. Its 13 tracks (12, not including the intro) clock in at 37 minutes, and they're all strong. The collaboration with Jeremih, "Sound of Love," is an early standout, with both singers bouncing off of each other really nicely. A little surprisingly, Fabolous' guest verse on "I Love It" is actually one of the most memorable moments of the album. And the chorus of "Paradise" (with its "pair of dice" pun) is one you'll find yourself humming after the album ends.
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Brooklynvegan
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Member Since: 10/13/2005
Posts: 18,646
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Omg Sasha you were right  They DID review it omfg what a QUEEN!
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Cassie
RockaByeBaby
Interscope / Bad Boy; 2013
By Miles Raymer; April 19, 2013
7.8
Late in 2012 an unexpected release made a splash amidst the deluge of year-end lists coming out at the time. It was a set of three album-length-plus mixtapes of music by pop-R&B singer Cassie, whose self-titled 2006 Bad Boy debut underperformed commercially but inspired a cultish following among R&B obsessives, and who had yet to release its proper follow-up.
Curated by a person or persons calling themselves the Cassie Collective, The Cassie Trilogy collects the various singles and guest appearances that she’d released sporadically over the past few years, sorted under the categories “minimalist R&B,” “dark electro,” and “pure pop.” This rubrick not only lent some much-needed organization to what could have been a sprawling mess of a project and helped show off the singer’s range, but also underlined how far she’s consistently been ahead of trends like the wave of atmospheric R&B that followed the Weeknd’s appearance on the scene and the avant garde-leaning artists like Grimes who’ve come to embrace bubblegum synth pop.
The trilogy also served as a reminder that we’re still waiting on that second LP. It’s supposedly still in the works, which is what Cassie and her team have been saying since last decade. But even if it never comes, RockaByeBaby, the mixtape she’s released to hold us over until then, would more than suffice.
It’s clear from the first song, “Paradise”, that the Cassie of 2013 is a whole different creature from the singer we were introduced to in 2006. For one, those different facets that were highlighted on The Cassie Trilogy have been unified into a whole that’s much more than the sum of its parts. There’s no gap between her pop star side and her nocturnal-minimalist-R&B sex kitten side anymore--now they slink up against each other salaciously on tracks like “Addiction” that deliver hooks and bedroom atmospherics in equal measure.
Cassie’s also begun blurring the line between her and the rappers she’s been collaborating with throughout her career. The snippet of dialogue from New Jack City that opens RockaByeBaby and the cover art of her posing with pistol in hand are the most obvious indicators of a more gangstafied image overhaul, but they’re just skin deep.
The more important thing is that the years of work she’s put in since her debut have given Cassie an on-mic presence that’s the equal to any of the rappers she’s recruited for features here. She’s not just a singer anymore; she’s actually got flow. It’s an impressive cast of mixtape heavyweights she’s working with, including Fabolous, French Montana, and Meek Mill, and none of them manage to run away with their respective tracks the way that rapper cameos on other R&B albums tend to. Sometimes she even gets the best of her guests, like “Take Care of Me Baby”, where her nimble, syncopated vocals exploit the best parts of the trap-inflected beat (produced by Mike Will Made It) so thoroughly that by the time Pusha T jumps on it his verse there’s not much left for him to do with the song, and his verse seems almost like a distraction.
Cassie’s willingness to tangle with hard, dark mixtape-rap beats (including one by Young Chop that’s as menacing as anything he’s produced for Chief Keef) gives RockaByeBaby a heft that most female-fronted R&B projects lack. Even the songs that lean more towards straight R&B, like “Numb” and the Jeremih-assisted standout cut “Sound of Love”--which boasts one of the nastiest synth leads in recent memory--have an aggressive edge that suits her newfound swagger.
What’s clear now is that Cassie’s no longer just competing in the R&B game anymore. While RockaByeBaby has aspects that invite comparisons to risk-taking singers like Jeremih and the Weeknd, its really deserves to be held up against the output of melody-intensive rappers like Drake and Future, and it stands up against either. There’s not only not a bad song on the record, but not even any that start becoming skippable after repeat back-to-back listens, a habit that its seamless transitions and remarkable consistency encourages. Cassie fans have spent a long, long time waiting for the rest of the world to start paying attention to her. After RockaByeBaby I can’t imagine they’ll be able to ignore her for much longer.
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http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/...-rockabyebaby/
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Member Since: 8/16/2011
Posts: 4,850
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I told you so,they love them some Cass'.The tape is too good for them to ignore it. Cassie can be proud,the tape has a fantastic reception  .
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There’s not only not a bad song on the record, but not even any that start becoming skippable after repeat back-to-back listens, a habit that its seamless transitions and remarkable consistency encourages. Cassie fans have spent a long, long time waiting for the rest of the world to start paying attention to her. After RockaByeBaby I can’t imagine they’ll be able to ignore her for much longer.
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Member Since: 10/13/2005
Posts: 18,646
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And the first two paragraphs mentioning the Trilogy again what kind of IMPACT.
Btw why has Lana been MIA these days?
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Member Since: 8/16/2011
Posts: 4,850
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I saw him/her lurking the base thread tho
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Member Since: 6/21/2008
Posts: 2,497
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OMG! my laptop has been broken and in NYC getting fixed so i couldnt download but i'm so glad its getting some praise!! all my friends LOVE it!
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Member Since: 8/18/2010
Posts: 5,070
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Lana and ha powaaaaaaa
Pitchfork better Stan
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Member Since: 10/13/2005
Posts: 18,646
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Member Since: 8/16/2011
Posts: 4,850
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It's a damn good time 
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