Be inspired! Or eat pizza, your choice.
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[4.62]
Anjy Ou: Kamaiyah has a go at an uplifting track over a throwback hip hop beat. It’s kind of endearing: Kamaiyah is not a singer, but that isn’t a bad thing in itself — she sounds like a big sister singing to me at home as we’re growing up in the 90s, encouraging me to love myself. I just wish she spent less time in the bland drawl of the chorus and more time letting her personality shine with her rapping.
[5]
Micha Cavaseno: There’s nothing good about good musical content when the music is reduced to absolute crumbs. All the highlights of Kamaiyah’s early material centered around that pleasure side of the brain in attempting to constantly relieve stress and take pride in surviving another day, but always felt like a Domino meets Da Brat style pop rap jam straight out of the early 90s that could be melodic and breezy and FUN despite Kamaiyah’s limitations as a singer or as a rapper. So why someone decided that the proper follow-up to prepare her for albums would be a distressingly flat, mostly sung record that’s unsubtle in trying to make Kamaiyah all about being a media role model first and a rapper maybe 7th is beyond me. Drew Banga, Trackademicks and 1-O.A.K are totally mining that 92-93 era of post-new jack pop rap in a way that while suiting Kamaiyah’s old aesthetic simply ends up missing the grit of those old tracks that made it the rough/smooth blend to ensure pleasantry. This isn’t a song, its a vehicle to make this girl aesthetically pleasing content and she deserved far far better.
[2]
Ryo Miyauchi: Personally, I prefer the message of self-love less instructive; the rapper herself sounded like an inspiration and example of self-pride in “I’m On” by just rapping about her successes since her broke days documented in “How Does It Feel?” I take this more of a tune for her credit roll after one productive year she has had. With already so much to show, she earned her place to tell her fans, “you can do it too.”
[6]
Nortey Dowuona: Funky fun and wise. And these words are enough.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Singing tepidly over a beat that early Keith Sweat would have used himself, Kamaiyah urges self-empowerment. The nostalgia is itself a security blanket, dulling the sentiment: self-empowerment encourages looking forward.
[5]
Adaora Ede: It feels pushy to try to pull off that emblematic new jack swing concept in rap or RnB or to be quite honest, any song in the modern pop canon. However “Build You Up” masterminds the ideal mix of syncopation and monotony. Even better than the verses, the overall milieu of the chorus is goth En Vogue. Kamaiyah’s occasional jagged flow reminds me of actually reminds me of another up-and-coming black female rapper — and their parables share parallels, in message and in style. It’s fresh in sound and swagger and I genuinely hope that more artists like Kamaiyah can rise above the many barriers in rap music today.
[7]
Jibril Yassin: Kamaiyah broke me down thanks to some incredibly awful singing delivered over a riotous sample that deserved so much more – and for a brief moment when she found the pocket and opted to instead deliver a blistering verse, totally had it. There’s plenty of songs defined by an ineffectual and just plain bad chorus and likely not many that could make its tweeness a calling card. This is not one of those exceptions.
[2]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: Don’t be fooled: this is the least motivational Kamaiyah song. Her vocals are far too drab to grant this the energy it needs. And while she’s touted platitudes before, her lyrics have never been as impersonal as these.
[3]