Fresh off of abandoning Ludacris’ Disturbing Tha Peace label, Chingy drops his sophomore album, Powerballin’, the follow-up to his multi-platinum debut, Jackpot. Obviously, Chingy has shown that he has the right formula in order to stimulate commercial success, unfortunately, the rest of this latest effort from the St. Louis native seems to be very monotonous and unoriginal. This album is just another example of an artist who was shown what types of songs to write in order to become popular and sell records, yet doesn’t ever take any risks and change up the feeling to any of his songs. Chingy seems to have skills in terms of flow, but his lyrics definitely need to mature in the future in order to be able to continue his career and gain any type of respect in the Hip Hop industry.
The first single off the album, “Balla Baby,” is the perfect example of the recycled ideas for lyrics that have been done over and over, therefore creating a song that is highly unoriginal and seeming to be a waste of album space. The production is decent, but Chingy’s bragging with claims of being a “balla” ruin the effort outright. These unoriginal ideas for songs become a recurring theme that seems to plague this whole album.
Easily the best song on this LP is “Don’t Worry” featuring Janet Jackson, which has the type of feel displayed on his previous hit “One Call Away” from his debut. The production is excellent, and Chingy actually shows a little bit of writing skills (although his lyrics are still quite unoriginal) in at least showing some respect to a woman in whom he has interest. Janet’s sexy voice creates an enjoyable hook that supplement the vibe of the track perfectly. Unfortunately this track is as good as it gets on this overall sub-par release.
The themes tackled throughout this album portray Chingy as a very materialistic person. From the lead single to songs like “Make That Ass Talk,” “Give Em Some Mo,” and “26’s” all he can brag about is stacks of money and all the superficial things, including women that come with the possession of currency. The unfortunate trend that the commercial Rap industry is showing nowadays is that of ignorance, and superficial values such as the importance of money. It would be so refreshing to have an artist go multi-platinum by stressing the importance of knowledge, unity, and standing up for something in which they believe. From the substance (or lack thereof) of both of Chingy’s albums they seem to indicate that he just goes with the flow and only cares to follow a formula that guarantees commercial success. However his unoriginal topics will most likely catch up to him sooner or later, and the mainstream sound he possesses will no longer be popular. |