Nichelle "Nikki D" Strong was born in Newark, New Jersey, but is in LA when she signs with Def Jam at the age of just twenty, becoming the first female rapper with the historical label.
She's young, she's cheerful, she raps and has fun: her fluent delivery is decent, syncopated, irregular, with the passing of listening increasingly irregular and soon insipid also due to the scarcity of themes (braggadocio, boys).
The production chosen by the record label, which for the occasion enlists Leaders of the New School, Prince Paul, Large Professor and Eric Sadler even from the Bomb Squad, in addition to a lot of guys unknown, brings out simplistic, skinny and minimal music, several mediocre jazzy and funky samples and doesn't spare annoying commercial songs: the best one is the title track, samples the splendid "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega without too many excuses and places a skinny, tight, simplistic rhythm, with a frantic drum machine and excellent jazzy strings distant in the background, the delivery tells you almost nothing and the only other thing worthy of note is the bridge that recalls the Vega sample.
However, it's no coincidence that it's the best tune included among these thirteen, which ends up in the soundtrack of an independent teen movie and manages to establish itself at the top of the Billboard Hot Rap Singles chart, remaining first for two weeks. Not bad, right? It's certainly a remarkable result, which brings the album released by Def Jam and Columbia / Sony quite well in the R&B chart (it goes close to the top 50) and makes them sell a considerable quantity of copies, 40,000 according to the most accredited sources, but there are those who exaggerate up to six numbers, I don't know on the basis of which count, but to tell you the truth I don't care much.
Rating: 4/10.
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