By Nicole Symmonds
GENRE: CONTEMPORARY GOSPEL
LABEL: EMI GOSPEL
RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 22, 2009
RATING: 3 OUT OF 5
You remember the days of creating your own mixtapes? You’d sit by your radio until your favorite song came on and then you’d hit that little button with the red in the middle so that you could record it onto your Maxell cassette tape and keep it in perpetuity?
Yeah, those are the kinds of mixtapes I remember. But then there is that other mixtape. The one that is the staple of hip hop, sold out of the trunks of people’s cars before they get a record deal, and even well after the ink has dried on their contract, to maintain their street credibility. The tape full of new joints and remixes of old ones that sometimes fall flat. Yeah, I’m not so much a fan of those. So when I saw that Kierra “Kiki” Sheard released a mixtape, I was a little hesitant. I wondered, “What kind of mixtape will this be?” Was I going to get more of the Kiki I’ve grown to love or was I going to get an album full of unnecessary remixes. Well, as it turns out, I got a little bit of both.
The jump off to Kiki’s Mixtape is “I Want Back”, one of four new tracks you will find on this album. The song starts out calmly with the sound of chords being played on a synthesized keyboard and then leads into Sheard’s attitude-infused, neck-swerving manner of vocal styling. She holds no punches on this intro track that finds her confronting the devil to get back everything he stole from her. She confronts the issue with so much vocal sass and musical bounce that you have no other choice but to get in line and get your stuff back. My other favorite of the new songs on the disc is “Teach Me”, a jazzy worship track about learning how to be like the Lord. Her voice is as rich as ever and her worship is genuine, as always. The other new songs on the album are the upbeat “Sing to the Lord” and a remix of Donnie Hathaway’s “This Christmas”.
These four new songs are surrounded by a selection of some of Sheard’s well-known hits that are remixed—or not—specially for this album. Two oldies but goodies, “You Don’t Know”, “Why Me?” appear untainted. But she dares to remix two tracks from her last album Bold Right Life—which were already highly stylized—“Wave Your Banner” and “Love Like Crazy.” “Wave Your Banner” gets an extreme makeover with a sample beat change that sounds a little bit more like the club then it did the first time around. “Love Like Crazy” just gets extended by way of looping the sample beat and vocals, which at best is totally unnecessary. In my humble opinion, she could have gotten by without doctoring up these tracks, but what would a mixtape be without the remixes?
All in all, this mixtape is good, but not in its entirety. The remixes fail it considering the originals are so much better, but it does shine by way of the new songs on the album. So, I say, go ahead and buy the four new tracks off of iTunes—“I Want Back”, “Teach Me”, “Sing to the Lord” and “This Christmas”—and leave the remixes to people who don’t already know about Kiki’s original flow.
