Cassie - Cassie (CD)

All Music Guide

By the time Cassie's first album was released in August 2006, her first single had been on the Billboard pop chart for nearly four months and reached nine million plays through her MySpace page. The page, set up in late 2005, was part of a strategy that sparked a lot of chatter and eventually landed the modelturnedvocalist on Diddy's Bad Boy, a label that had been in a deep slump. With plenty of anticipation already in place, Diddy did diddly when it came to shaping Cassie's career, stepped aside, and allowed his new signing along with her musical partner, Ryan Leslie, a studio doitall with credits on songs by Britney Spears and Donell Jones to run her course. "Me U," the decidedly unwholesome track that excited so many MySpace users, became one of the spring/summer hits of 2006, following the likes of Ciara's "Goodies" and Teairra Marí's "Make Her Feel Good" as a sexy, assertive single with an intricate and spacefilled arrangement that doesn't batter the ears into submission. The l...ooming synthesizer patterns, along with Cassie's upfront and plainly sung vocal, combine with an icecreamtruck melody to give it a slightly twisted and threatening edge contained by none of its likesounding predecessors. The second single, the snapping and swirling "Long Way 2 Go," is just as irresistible in its flippant playfulness. Cassie scolds a hopeless suitor with such cutting nonchalance she's basically swatting a fly that you can see her delivering the lines by cellphone as she eyes a display of designer shoes. The brief album could only lose steam after that, and it naturally does, though a handful of songs stimulate enough to make certain that it's no rushreleased cashin. As a vocalist, Cassie has very limited range, but she has enough character and ability to sell her material without fail. And there will never not be a need for a vocalist who doesn't handle each stage of a relationship as if her life depends on it. - Andy Kellman, All Music Guide Read more Less