Heavy is the head…
[Video]
[3.43]
Will Adams: India.Arie’s “I Am Not My Hair” came out thirteen years ago, but only recently did I learn that this feel-good, be-yourself anthem was mainly rooted in a rebranding for Pink. (The original title was presumably “I Am Not My Marketing Gimmick.”) Similarly, “Crown” appears as benign empowerment fluff until you realize it’s part of a Dove campaign, which helps explain why it sounds like “Whip My Hair” without any of the joy.
[4]
Katie Gill: There’s so much potential here. Hair politics, especially with regards to black women, is a deeply personal subject. There are so many personal stories with regards to someone and their hair, that the song could have gone in so many directions… but as soon as I saw that “Dove x Kelly Rowland” graphic at the start of the video, I knew we were in for a middle of the road, slightly generic, “Fight Song” level of empowerment that ends up saying nothing. Unfortunately, my suspicions were correct.
[4]
Stephen Eisermann: Feel good empowerment songs are super common these days, but genuinely good ones are harder to come by. “Crown,” fortunately, falls closer to the latter than the former. Although the song sounds too much like an unfinished demo, Kelly sounds confident as she sings to women everywhere (and more specifically, black women) about the beauty of their hair. It’s a fun, light track that could bang so hard if they’d bothered to finish producing it.
[6]
Iris Xie: This still sounds like a B-side single released on ohnotheydidnt and music download blogs back in 2003, and it’s a sign of stability, but not growth, that Rowland hasn’t diverged from that aesthetic.
[3]
Vikram Joseph: The hair-positivity message is, obviously, great — the fact remains, though, that this revolves around a supremely irritating hook, with bombastic production that fails to cover for the fact that Janelle Monae’s one line about her perm in “I Like That” had more wit and substance than this entire song.
[3]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: I feel bad that this sounds like a consolation prize.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: Still the richest timbre in Destiny’s Child, squandered on the cursory extended version of a jingle.
[2]