Low-budget review: MOC's Jersey Chica

Artist: MOC (pronounced Em-Oh-See)
Album: Jersey Chica (debut)
Genre: hip-hop all the way, baby, but explicitly evangelical Christian (no longer nearly so odd a combination as it used to be)
Peril's rating: 4 1/2 stars out of five.
Where to buy it: wherever you can find it, to which I can only say good luck Googling...but it's worth the effort. I think I found my copy at Amazon, if that helps.

Review:

Nice variety of styles (sub-styles, I suppose I should say, since you're not exactly going to get a bluegrass number out of her), all well done. MOC can sing as well as rap, though her voice is a touch better suited for the rap -- she's not Cecilia Bartoli but she keeps her melodies within her range and hits the pitches in a quite adequately enjoyable manner. ...continue reading...VERY skillful rhyming; if we were rating elements of the album that would get a solid five-star.

I came to MOC by way of TobyMac (who features her on his cut "Whoops-a-Daisy"), and she suffers by comparison only because she is more unalloyed hip-hop, whereas TobyMac uses hip-hop as just one element of his musical palette. If you're coming to MOC having just listened to Diverse City, you'll be in a little bit of danger of thinking Jersey Chica is a bit monotonous by the end -- not much danger, if you like hip-hop, but a little bit. Had I instead been listening to a steady diet of hip-hop for the last month, I think MOC would be pulling five stars from me.

I suppose that means that what I perceive as her limitations are more likely simply limitations of the hip-hop genre. A first-rate C&W artist, for example, will cover a much wider range of emotional tone and musical stylings than big-name hip-hop artists seem to, and MOC is no exception there. Take "Forever On:" the opening raised my hopes that we were going to get a playful, perhaps even tongue-in-cheek number, as long as we were still just in the percussion intro with its handclaps; but when the keyboards kicked in they were in the typical minor key and MOC came in with that same edge to her voice that makes you feel like she's angry no matter what she's actually saying. Can she do playful and girlish? Dunno; it would be very interesting to hear her try.

But that's asking her to do what would interest me rather than what she has a heart for; and what she does, she does pretty darn well. "Blasé," "I Like It!" and "Come One Come All" are in the rotation on my primary playlist (along with Ella Fitzgerald, Shania Twain, Ukrainian pop artist Glyukoza, Tchaikovsky, Alison Krauss, Luis Miguel, Alanis Morissette, and obscure alternative rock band Chagall Guevara, among numerous others -- I have eclectic tastes but whatever it is you're doing, if you want to make that list you'd bloody well better make me think you're good at it for at least one full song). Every other cut on the album makes my secondary playlist, which means that she's got three cuts I'm always in the mood for and no cut that makes me say, "Oh, let's skip that one." That's better than a lot of bigger names manage to do on the Redneck Peril ratings -- including (at least as far as consistency goes) TobyMac himself, who generally manages more than three primary-rotation songs per album but can also be counted on for a couple of stinkers that I can't bear to listen to.

I'd be very curious to see how much energy MOC can infuse into a live performance. My guess is that she could rock the house and send you out fired up.

And, for what it's worth, based on the album cover I'd say she's pretty darn cute -- she may be a Jersey chica but she's got a good Kazakh girl's attitude to hair coloring. Though I doubt she much cares about a practically-forty-year-old Okie redneck's opinion in that respect; and also, she would have to prove to me that she's capable of giggling before she could command an unqualified thumbs-up.

Oh, and The Princess (for whom I bought the thing in the first place) likes it, too, and indeed when all of my eight kids (ranging from 8 to 18) are in the Suburban, Jersey Chica is a generally acceptable choice for traveling tune-age. Which probably means more than everything else I just said -- since I am, after all, a practically-forty-year-old Okie redneck, and therefore not the first person you're going to go to when you want an opinion about a Jersey girl's hip-hop debut.

Bottom line: Money well spent, sure hope there's more to come from her.