Zion, Elvis Crespo, Miranda!, Mark Ronson and Dizzee Rascal.

the music press

tue 6/12/2007

A collage of Zion, Elvis Crespo, Miranda!, Mark Ronson and Dizee Rascal.

Puerto Rican blog La Letrina is "sickened" by Zion’s "attempts at rapping" on The Perfect Melody and frustrated that it "doesn't make people want to rub nipples on the dancefloor.” His high-profile collaboration with Senegalese rapper Akon is “smooth and overproduced like any other R&B song,” according to La Onda Tropical.
Elvis Crespo, the force behind the must-play-at-every-fiesta song Suavemente, releases his eighth album, Regresó El Jefe (The Boss Is Back). Billboard calls it “merengue bomba, a more driven, edgier merengue.” Florida’s La Prensa adds that the 13 cuts are, unsurprisingly, very “danceable and full of romanticism.”
El Disco De Tu Corazón is Argentine disco-pop group Miranda!'s third release. Argentinean newspaper El Clarin asks: "Is the album’s cover a spoof of American fast food" or "a nod to Mexican superhero El Chapulín Colorado? Even Julieta Venegas sings in a Martian cumbia.” Gonzo Baires laments that Miranda! should have taken advantage of guests like Fangoria and Venegas "to make stronger and more original music.”
DJ and hot-sh*t producer Mark Ronson (e.g., Christina Aguilera, Lilly Allen and Amy Winehouse) releases covers album Version. Tracks from The Smiths, Radiohead and Britney Spears get the Ronson treatment as he “rebuilds them brilliantly with hip hop beats and upbeat Motown arrangements,” according to Sputnikmusic. Yahoo’s Dotmusic is less impressed and pans the album for being “disappointingly short on spark, spunkiness and style" while "relying instead on novelty for impact.”
U.K. Garage rapper Dizzee Rascal returns with his third album, Maths & English. Nearly five years after his debut, the British rapper “still sounds like nothing else,” declares The Guardian U.K. Dizzee Rascal is “like a thug from a parallel universe” explains Rolling Stone, which gives Maths three and a half stars for being a “tense, uncomfortable prospect that gets under your skin something fierce.”