Weekly > Reviews
Nelly - Brass Knuckles
Remember Nelly when he first came on the scene?! The strange facial plaster? The Skinny gangster persona. Previous albums such as Southpaw Gramma, Nellyville?
After four years and four previous albums totalling 30 million sales Nelly breaks his silence and introduces his new, fifth and much heavier album Brass Knuckles. There’s no longer any sign of the plaster and judging by the front cover that’s not the only thing that has changed! With the buff, oiled and tattooed torso on the album cover… your immediately thinking is this really Nelly?
This album is a mixture of heavy beats, slow jams, dance floor anthems and said to be showcasing his more all round talents than before. Nelly says this shows his versatility, spitting rhymes with deep percussive flow and then switching it up to sing over soulful hooks. Unfortunately that’s about all he does do. When actually listening to the album it strikes you these tracks may get a lot of air play but after a while they all sound the same.
Sixteen different artists assist Nelly through each track’s, ever changing pace. With a huge entourage of collaborators such as Pharrell with single Let It Go, Body On Me featuring Akon and Ashanti. Ciara and Jermaine Dupri with Stepped On My J’Z, Snoop Dogg beating out LA then smoothing it out with Usher on Long Night and the only impressive addition Chuck D’s contribution to Self-Esteem.
Every track excluding one is a collaboration. One and Only is just that…. The one and only track Nelly presents to his fans solo. It seems that Nelly can’t seem to perform on “Brass Knuckles” without an entourage backing him. It’s anyone’s guess at to why that is, maybe he knew the tracks were not that strong and he’s wanted to mask it with a big name camouflage. Every track has an artist or two to help get Nelly through the 62 minutes his album offers.
- Nelly
- Brass Knuckles (2008)
- Category: Album
- Label: Universal / Island Records
- Reviewed by: DMJB
- Published on: 22 Sep 2008
- Comments: 0
- Beat Surrender Rating:
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Add to favouritesAll in all not it’s not a bad selection and you will surely hear it playing from every night club you enter within the next few months. For me though it lacks a lot of the one artist whose album this is supposed to be. You cannot fail to hear Nelly’s distinctive vocals in the background, but there are not enough of them leading the tracks, as a result the album doesn’t have any of the excitement and sing-song hooks that made him famous.
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