CD Review

Artist: GreenTaRACD

Title: Global Baby

Label: Easy Bake Records

Publicity: Killbeat Music www.killbeatmusic.com

Released: October 2^nd 2007 

3 ½ Stars  

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey 

Sultry songstress GreenTaRA seems to be a complete package; great pipes, beauty, and songs with substance. She’d be a record labels dream with her catchy global-conscious collection of songs on her sophomore album Global Baby. Stemming from the early nineties, GreenTaRa’s songs fuse R&B and old-skool that seem to be temporarily interrupted with slips of Reggae and dips of rap. GreenTaRA appears to be the type who wants to make her music as open as her philosophy on community.  

A unique blend of African-America, Cherokee and Scottish roots, GreenTaRA seems to embody the music scene emerging from the West Coast Canadian music hub of Canada; with socially conscious songs like ‘Controller’ that speaks of Harriet Tubman, a former slave who became a conductor on the underground railway to eventually bring over 300 hundred slaves to freedom, and an edgy multi-cultural perspective, with a diverse synthesis of music ranges.  

My only hesitation to this collection was that even though the lyrics were interesting and complex, and GreenTaRA’s voice was a delight to listen too, the songs did seem a little too safe melodically and rhythmically. The songs sounded so familiar that they didn’t just hark back to the nineties, they actually sounded as though they had been pulled directly from a ‘standard’ format from the nineties. If GreenTaRA wanted to have that nineties feel I would have liked to of heard her rip out perhaps a biting commentary on the indisposable junk North Americans throw-out to a Whitney style ‘Queen Of The Night’ perhaps. I think GreenTaRA has the musical chops, but I’d be afraid she’d blend in as opposed to stand out with Global Baby. 

With that said ‘Break Out (The Zoo II)’ about ‘the infinite number of monkeys theory’ that results in ‘typing the perfect copy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet’ is edgy, catchy and both weighted and whimsy; a fully enjoyable track.  

I am somewhat on the fence about GreenTaRA as Global Baby seems to work on so many levels but still feels as though some essential element is lacking.  

Get Up

Figure It Out

Still Can’t Live (Without You)

Life Can Be Sweeter

Revolution Time

Controller

Doin’ It

Not Far

Break Out (The Zoo II)

Communication Altar

All The Same

Who?

From The Moment We Drop