Search - Carmen Electra :: Carmen Electra

Go White Girl! : A Descent into Madness

Cabir Davis | 04/03/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"What a strange, strange album. When I first got it, I thought it was perhaps some sort of twisted joke from the 1990s - and since I am a genuine lover of all things bizarre and hilarious (preferably both at the same time), Carmen Electra's debut album seemed like the perfect candidate. Hey, if Traci Lords and Tia Carrere can release pop albums, who are we to fault Carmen?

But heres the thing. This is NOT a pop album. Instead, it's a full fledged rap album - and heavy on the rap. I'm not kidding. A couple years ago, there was this cruel/funny Jenny McCarthy movie called "Dirty Love" where Carmen played the role of a wannabe black rapper-masseuse. Its ironic that about a decade before that movie, she actually did record a rap album, and here it is.

Taking a page out of Janet Jackson's illustrious example of using `interludes' on an album, Carmen decides that good old rap songs aren't enough, and that we need `segues' between each of them. To be clearer, most songs are separated by a meaningless instrumental passage of the worst possible synthesizer muzak, and these are supposed to lend the album more punch as a `concept album'. What concept they were going for here is dubious at best, but let me just say that the album is not as hideous as you might expect. In fact, its quite a harmless slice of early `90s pop-rap, but it also exemplifies everything that is horrible about that genre.

The problem though is Carmens' disgusting voice. On all of the songs, she reads out the words (literally), and she doesn't so much sing as she does recite. The production is dated, the lyrics are laughable, and the end results are decidedly mixed. If you find worth in things that are so bad that they're good, then this might work for you (it did for me). Put this on for your friends and watch their indifference toward you transform into pure, unbridled hatred!

The greatest thing here, depending on your point of view, is the notoriously bad "Fantasia Erotica". Wow. The album ends with "This is my House" where Carmen defiantly states that this, indeed, is her house. You gotta hand it to Carmen. Its this sort of straight-forward songwriting that got such greats as Dylan and Jagger where they are today. Add Electra to that short list of luminaries.

I must be honest - this is good old fashioned pop-rap trash. They obviously wanted to project Carmen as the first all-white female rapper but people laughed the very concept out of the record stores, which is why this remains Carmen's only album. Still, for curiosity purposes as well as some camp kitsch, this is a must buy.

Three gloriously bad stars.
"