Music Review: Ciara "Fantasy Ride"

By Brittany Rodgers

After numerous delays, Ciara has finally released her third album, “Fantasy Ride.” The road to release for this album had been a little rocky due to a variety of tracks being leaked. After so many of them were spilled onto the Internet, some songs were deleted from the album, which was a main reason why it had been pushed back so many times.

The theme of "Fantasy Ride" is based on a super-hero cartoon character/alter ego named “Super C,” also known as Ciara. Honestly, with all of the "swagger-jacking" controversy going on between Ciara and Beyonce, it wasn’t a good look for her to make an alter ego of herself, which can be comparable to Beyonce's other side Sasha.

Ciara is well-known hit songs like “Goodies,” “Like a Boy,” and “2 Step,” which defined her when her style was laid back. Now, she shows that she is more grown up and mature in her music.

“Fantasy Ride” is a mixture of romantic, pop and club songs. Producers who worked on this album were The Y’s, Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins and R&B singer/songwriter The Dream.

The opening of the album starts off good with “Ciara to the Stage,” which is kind of reminiscent of her song “Promise” from her previous album "Evolution." Later on throughout the song, Ciara brings out her rapping skills, making the song even better.

The next couple of tracks have featured artists. Ciara latest single “Love, Sex and Magic,” featuring Justin Timberlake, is a club banger.

Ludacris is also featured, and although they have worked together previously, “High Price” isn’t one of their best songs together. On this track, Ciara talks about buying whatever she likes, singing in a Opera tone of voice.

Some of the strongest songs on the album are “Like a Surgeon” (it kind of reminds you of “Like a Boy”) which was produced by The Dream. Another one of her hit singles is “Never Ever” featuring Young Jeezy. Towards the end of the album, “What’s your Name?” is a decent love song with a nice tempo.

A couple of the tracks on the album have a very pop sound and could be played solely in the club, like the song with Missy Elliott called “Work." It has a very techno sound but is good for dancers. Not too many songs have been played featuring Chris Brown but him collaborating on “Turntables” might help him in the pop community. In this song, Ciara tells Chris Brown to be her DJ for the night; it's strictly for the clubs.

As previously stated, The Dream also produced a couple tracks on "Fantasy Ride." He produced and is featured on “Lover’s Thing.” This song definitely has that Dream signature sound. It also sounds like his song “Rub My Back.” He also produced “Keep Dancin on Me,” which is not an attention grabber.

Two songs that have potential are “G is For Girl (A-Z),” which is almost similar to Beyonce's song “Diva.” Here Ciara goes down the alphabet telling what each letter stands for. For Ciara, ‘G’ stands for a gangsta girl. Ciara tells people to kiss her swag in her song “Pucker Up,” produced by Darkchild. Instead of saying kiss her behind, Ciara is saying pucker up your lips.

Ciara definitely introduced her album with a good song but ended it with the boring “I Don’t Remember,” in which she croons about being intoxicated and not remembering anything.

Ciara has a new album, new style and new personality now. Her last two albums were successful and showed the dancing Ciara. This album shows that Ciara has matured and that she has a different edge to her singing.

Overall “Fantasy Ride” is something new to Ciara fans and should be rated a 6.5 on a scale from 1-10.