New Popsession: Little Jackie - Made For TV

Last month we reported Little Jackie would release their sophomore album this year, which had us very very excited. They did report it being close to finished on their Facebook, so we did know it could be released any day, but some label stuff was standing in the way so we didn’t organize a launch party on our stoop just yet.
Then, last night we suddenly saw this being posted…

Messages like this are one of the reasons we think Imani rocks. Just having enough of waiting on your label and just thinking ‘You know what? If you don’t put this out there I will!’, and not just leaving it there but actually making it happen rocks. Imagine the amount of demos and cancelled albums we’d have heard if all artists where cool like that. Though we guess the fact she wrote all her own material did help a bit. Yet another reason to love the girl.

Despite the fact Imani is the voice, face and songwriter of Little Jackie, we think this is enough about her and we should try to focus on why we love Little Jackie so much.
For starters…

- All their songs have brilliant Motown/soul production which succeeds to sound authentic and fresh at the same time. We love Motown.

-The lyrics.
Oh those lyrics. They are about 90% of what makes Little Jackie so much more fun and interesting than plenty artists out there. There are the usual subjects like relationships, the end of relationships and sex, but the way they are handled puts many other songs to shame. In general fun pop artists lack substance and serious artists lack a sense of humour. Little Jackie has both.
While lots of songs out there about love are written with the whole purpose of selling an album or provoking some emotion, Imani’s lyrics are like she put all her caring about what others might think aside and bluntly wrote down anything that was on her mind. Which probably is really the case. This makes the lyrics more genuine, real and relatable, but also very witty, without every feeling like it’s trying hard to be.

An example: when Christina’s feeling horny she sings about how she’s a genie you have to ‘rub’ the right way (okay, considering she also did this song she’s a bad example..), when Britney feels horny she comes up with word games that don’t make any sense whatsoever. Little Jackie just sings ‘Sorry, I can’t see straight, there is a cock blocking my vision’. Okay, written down that doesn’t look much better, but when you hear it in context it really is.

For the reasons stated above The Stoop was one of our favourite albums of 2008. Anyone who can watch this video without getting a smile on their face can stop reading, and probably stop bothering with pop music in general, because both great pop melodies and clever lyrics don’t get much better than this.
Made For TV truly is The Stoop Pt.2. Thus much, you could put any track of both albums on the other one and noone would notice. You could consider this a weakness, lack of progress and all, but that would be like complaining Girls Aloud are working with Xenomania agáin, or asking Beyoncé if she doesn’t have any other personalities because ‘Sasha’s getting old’. Catchy motown songs with quirky lyrics are what Little Jackie does, and they do it incredibly well.

If that didn’t convince you yet.. just listen to the whole album in this player: