Defsounds

When I was asked to review this album , I thought , hmmm, this is going to be an album full of “Smack That” and “I Wanna Love You” –type tracks. Well, I was wrong. (Yeah, shut the fuck up, it happens).

While the album is far from classic, it’s a decent album and in this day and age of weak hip-hop and r&b, that’s a pretty big compliment. Some of the best work on this album is where you’d least expect it. On the almost ‘rock/pop’ ballad “Never Took The Time”, AKON eases your ears for a few minutes with some real melodic and mellow singing over guitars. I thought it was good for him to venture that route. In fact, I think he sounds better on that kind of vibe than he does on hip-hop joints.

On the track following that ,“Mama Africa”, we hear a reggae-vibed joint that’ll have all dem rude bway’s puffin dee ganja SEN! It’s a good, old-type reggae joint, like the Bob Marley days not like the commercial shit out now.Although on a lot of tracks, especially the ones that are more hip-hop oriented, I keep waiting for some MC to jump in because I’m so accustomed to hearing him as the hook man.

I wouldn’t even classify this album as a hip-hop OR an R&B album, its somewhere to the left and down the block a little bit. I kind of like the fact that he put the commercial joints out to sell and get attention (like most artists SHOULD do) and had more depth, diversity and substance on the rest of the album. Maybe more artists should try this and we can get out of this bullshit that yall now call “music”.

Overall AKON’s KONVICTED gets 3 out of 5 Def Ears from me.

It’s definitely worth a few plays in the whip.