Monie Love — Down to Earth

Simone "Monie Love" Gooden is a London female rapper who tries to break into the hip hop scene with an almost entirely hip house record. After signing with dance label Cooltempo, she publishes her debut single "I Can Do This" in 1988, the piece peaks in the UK and Netherlands charts. Her second single "Grandpa's Party" (1989) is another success, charting in UK (#16), Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand. In 1990, Monie Love releases her debut studio album.

To help her, production of the Jungle Brothers and background vocals of De La Soul, among the best artists of the period. The rhythms aren't as bad as they seem, that pop dance brought out by the producers is quite lively and energetic, and the rapping of Monie L is initially good, syncopated, flowing, even cool if we want: the first songs are quite noteworthy ("Monie in the Middle", "It's a Shame"), but something isn't working.

I think it's not just the pop chorus sung or interpreted in a light-hearted and banal way, there's something bad in these minimal, simple and frenetic beats and in these all too syncopated and urgent deliveries of the girl. Perhaps the drum machine is too pounding and skeletal, regular but rough and very hard, to make you better appreciate the performance of the rapper.

For example, personally, something in "Ring My Bell" annoys me: hip house production is punctual and at the same time mocking, looks fascinated to dance while winking at electro and aiming for hip hop, that drum machine here is skinny and minimal, harmless for once, but the guest (Ultra Naté) performs a lame hook and Monie Love delivers in a cumbersome and syncopated way. It's one of the worst tracks here and kicks off a pretty weak phase, with several uninspired tracks, hip dance beats, slow deliveries and skippable trivial hooks.

The album is promoted by six singles ("I Can Do This", "Grandpa's Party", "Monie in the Middle", "It's a Shame (My Sister)", "Down to Earth" and "Ring My Bell"), all charted, with "Monie in the Middle" and "It's a Shame" that peaks both #1 in the US rap chart. Released by Cooltempo under Chrysalis, distributed by EMI, due to the success of De La Soul's single "Buddy" featuring Queen Latifah, Jungle Brothers, Q-Tip and Monie Love, the label beyond Jungle Brothers' "Done by the Forces of Nature" (1989), Eternal, subsidiary of Warner Music UK, releases the disk in United States changing totally the cover, which shifts from a pensive and strong Monie Love on a dark blue-green backdrop to a playful Monie Love carefreely hopping among flowers against a yellow background, creating a cover virtually identical to that of De La Soul's "3 Feet High and Rising", even changing the original title color from pink to purple, so that it still resembles De La Soul's cover.

Filled with more or less successful samples, the album received mostly positive reviews from critics, and goes strong charting in four continents and peaking #30 in UK and #26 in the US rap chart (distributed by Warner Bros. Records) and becomes one of the best-selling hip-hop records in US.

Rating: 5/10.