You a Bad Girl and Your Friends Bad Too

Let’s just get this out of the way first: Run the World (Girls) is one of the worst songs ever in the history of the world (Full disclosure: I’m a guy). With that said, if you chop that song off of Beyoncé’s latest album, which is easy because it is the last track, 4 is her strongest work to date. Dangerously in Love was too top heavy on the hits. B’Day sounded like it was rushed. And I Am… Sasha Fierce was too schizophrenic (which may actually had been its intent). But 4 is her most cohesive album yet (assuming you hit the stop button before you get to Run the World (Girls), seriously that song is horrible).

The album starts off strong enough with the Prince style power ballad 1+1 although once the guitar solo comes in at the end of the song you wonder why it was not there throughout the whole song. That and why didn’t B get the actual Prince to play on the song instead some cheap Prince knockoff. I Care is such a weird RnB meets pop song that you will be reaching for the liner notes to see if Cee-Lo and/or Danger Mouse were involved (nope, it the dude who co-produced Kanye West’s Runaway).

While the Kenneth Edmonds (Babyface get back to making your own music stat! RnB needs you) co-written and produced Best Thing I Never Had is classic woman scorned Beyoncé (where she is at her best) in the tradition of Me Myself and I and Irreplaceable. I am still trying to decide if Rather Die Young is a lost gem from the RnB radio in the eighties or an AM radio hit from the seventies. Disappointingly the Ryan Tedder produced (and Diane Warren??? written) I was Here does not use the same backing track as Halo, the song Tedder famously recycled for five oor so other songs he produced.

The most notable songs on the album is where she dusts off two classic for sample. First there is the soon to be slow burning house party staple Party where producer Kanye West lifts lines from Doug E Fresh and Slick Rick’s old school classic La Di Da Di and sprinkles them throughout the song. While the middle school version of myself totally geeked when Beyoncé lifted the intro of Boyz II Men Uhh Ahh for Countdown. Yeah the song itself turned out to be a letdown, but you got to give her props for resurrected the greatest RnB group of the nineties. Come to think of it, Babyface, how about get back into the studio with Boyz II Men while you are at it.

Song to Download - Party

4 gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.