Danity Kane

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Danity Kane

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It would be easy for me to just say "I Like It," and bounce because I enjoyed it that much.

Danity Kane won a legion of fans thanks to appearing on the MTV series Making The Band Three. The group recently released their debut self-titled CD. The group is a certified smash hit, they sold 90,000 copies of their album on the first day of release! The CD is really good. How could the girls miss with Diddy overseeing the project. He hooked up his lovely MTV reality star ladies with the hottest producers and song writers in the industry. The result is a solid 15 track CD, one song is a hidden bonus track.

Fans of the show will like this CD because it will give them a chance to hear the completed versions of songs they saw the girls working on during the series. "One Shot," "Hold Me Down," "Ride For You," and the Scott Storch produced song "Sleep On It," are all songs viewers got to see the girls working on during the third season of Making The Band Three.

Every song on the album sounds solid. It's surprising that "Show Stopper" was chosen as the first single. Obviously, the song has caught on with the Danity Kane fans as it is a top download on iTunes. Other Danity Kane songs that are on the iTunes top 100 chart include "Sleep on It," "Ride For You," and "One Shot." It's a really great debut from the girls of Danity Kane. The CD liner notes include full color photos and one page acknowledgements from each of the group members--Dawn, Aubrey, D. Woods, Shannon and Aundrea.

The album includes production by Scott Storch, Ryan Leslie, Timbaland, Brian Michael Cox, Rodney Jerkins among other top producers.

I remember sometime last summer I was watching MTV Hits, and they were literally playing anything Danity Kane-related nonstop all one weekend: they had the girls in the studio, "Show Stopper" was being showcased continuously, and the ladies were even counting down their favorite videos. So it's no surprise that I got sick of them pretty quickly. But I finally listened to their self-titled album and I found that it's better than most albums from "manufactured" groups.

If people don't understand why I say they should switch labels, I attribute it to past experience. The ladies said in interviews that they are so glad to be on Bad Boy. But I'm been looking at Bad Boy's track record for the past few years, and what being on that label seems to mean NOW is that Diddy will release two songs from your album and then forget about you. Case in point: Dream, New Edition, 8Ball & MJG, Mase (think Welcome Back era), B5, Da Band...should I go on?

Anyway, since these five ladies were brought together on Making the Band, some people might want to easily write them off as some manufactured no-talents, but that's actually far from the case. While I'm not sure what "Danity Kane" is supposed to mean, and I agree with the other reviewers when they said that Aundrea is the best singer (and she's definitely a sight for sore eyes), the group as a whole still produce some good songs. I'm starting to like "Show Stopper" more than I used to (even though I'm not a big fan of Yung Joc), but there are better songs than that, like "One Shot".

But the album's best moments are when the ladies slow things down, like "Ride For You", "Right Now" and especially "Stay With Me". Still, there are a few times when the songs feel disposable, like "Back Up". "Heartbreaker" seems to contradict itself, and the hidden track "Sleep On It" will make you want to do just that. But Danity Kane do prove that the era of good R&B singing groups isn't dead, so pick it up.

Anthony Rupert