LAURA JOHNSON
A&E Assistant
Only a week after the launch of his debut album, “Playing With Fire,” Kevin Federline received the news via text message that he would no longer be Mr. Britney Spears. No longer with a woman who cares by his side, at least he has the album to hopefully drown his sorrows and boost his self esteem.
Too bad “Playing with Fire” is more like a misfire than a raging, dance-club booty shaking ball of energy that K-Fed tried to accomplish while writing the tracks on the disc.
It is like Federline almost feels rushed to get all of his words out in his songs. Stealing beats from Ludacris and Lil John, Federline only wishes he could rap with the quickness that Luda does or have the authority to tell women which food item to shake next like Lil John.
Vanilla Ice and Eminem have proven that a white man can make it in a predominantly Black genre of music, but in this case, skin color is not what is holding Federline back from having the next big rap album. Instead, Federline should have tried to find a voice of his own.
Meager beginnings as a backup dancer for the likes of Pink, Justin Timberlake, LFO and Britney Spears, Federline barely survived the Los Angeles lifestyle between shows, but somehow he made it through the hip-hop wilderness. This album reflects everything he has gone through as the self-described man that America loves to hate, as he said in an article he wrote for the New York Post.
In one of his more creative lines, spoken in his song “America’s Most Hated,” Pepperdine students will be thrilled to hear that the school’s name is even flung into the mix.
“I’m K. Federline, I built me a kingdom down the street from Pepperdine,” Federline raps.
But it is in “A League of my Own” where K-Fed proves what a great poet he truly is.
“I’m not saying I’m the best I’m just saying forget the rest; I’m in a league of my own.”
Federline is in a league of his own — the question is, does anyone want to join him?
Federline has a varied list of things he raps about, including alcohol, drug paraphernalia and women. An even more eclectic list, however, would be one of the things that he calls himself on the album. These include but are not limited to: “the pimp of all pimps,” “the pancake man,” “a rockstar,” “he looks like a model,” “I’m the truth” and “ a superstar who married a superstar”
The interludes between a few of the tracks are quite scary. On one he actually laughs out loud while on the phone with a friend who said that he just took a girl’s virginity.
The only good song on the whole record is “Crazy,” which happens to feature Britney Spears. She purrs in her sultry electronic voice, “And they say, I’m crazy, for loving you, for feeling you.” As if Spears does not have enough songs with the word “crazy” in it, this one is actually pretty good. Her crooning chorus almost makes up for his non-sensical verses where he even has the nerve to cite a passage from Psalms, which was also cited by Coolio, “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” It leaves one to wonder when Spears’s new album will be coming out. No matter how processed her voice is, she has more talent in her pinky toe than K-Fed could ever wish to have.
It is ironic that K-Fed’s whole point of releasing the EP was to show how he made it all on his own, and that nothing had to do with his wife, yet the best song on the album features her voice. Federline tries so hard to prove the world wrong that he simply ends up with a befuddled mess made up of not enough imagination with too much effort. Federline is in a league of his own, and hopefully he will stay there.
11-16-2006
