There is no denying, Jennifer Hudson has an amazing voice, however it is not a voice best suited to club tracks. Thankfully someone at her label understood this and we have an album perfectly suited to Jennifer's voice and not a clone of something best left to the Pussycat Dolls. The album consists of production from the best of the moment, these being Timbaland, Stargate, T-Pain, Warryn Campbell, The Underdogs, Polow Da Don & Missy Elliott. Due to this, the album is a collection of well sung, well written R&B with just enough modern day spin to make them accessible to the masses.
The album deals with mostly slowed down tracks, none of which however are boring. They are all very engaging due to Jennifer's voice and the lyrics. Some of the stand outs of the slow songs would be Polow Da Don produced 'My Heart' 'Invisible' from the Underdogs and surprisingly the T-Pain duet 'What's Wrong (Go Away)' The best thing about these songs is that although they talk about love, they sound more sincere than most of the other songs out there at the moment and the songs deal with the topic of love from angles that are not usually taken by the average pop song (hence it avoids sounding cliched).
Slow tracks aside, there are some songs which up the tempo a bit, such as lead single 'Spotlight' which is already top 15 on the charts here in the UK, and Timbaland produced 'Pocketbook' which features Ludacris. The interesting thing about this song is that it doesn't quite seem to fit with the rest of the album, leaning very heavily towards the current urban-pop standard. The song isn't bad, it sounds a bit out of place.
One of the most interesting songs on the album is 'Can't Stop The Rain' produced by Stargate and written by Ne-Yo, this song deals with a topic rarely talked about in music today. It's about a friend who gets killed in a car accident because his girlfriend was drunk whilst driving, and dealing with the aftermath of being torn between comforting her and feeling anger at her for what happened. A very interesting song.
To try and give you some idea of what it might sound like, I think the best way to describe this would be Aretha Franklin meets Beyonce. The songs are deeper and more emotional that most of what of out there, you feel something in these songs. A highly recommended record for those who think it's about time something a bit deeper and of better quality came out or for those who want a record that isn't full of club-bangers and want to take it at a slighly slower pace. A very good record, not to be missed!