Keyshia Cole’s Woman to Woman Brings It Back to the Basics
Keyshia Cole's blood and guts are a welcome antidote to the passive, drained sorrow of 2012's wave of affluent indie-R&B.
The album's title explains the outlandish cover art idea more than the music itself. After such a radical change in strategy, this set hardly seems like the best choice. Keyshia Cole couldn't release an album without talking about her exes. Cole's remarkable abilities are shown to their fullest in her fifth studio album. Her voice is as full of feeling as ever, and the spurned-woman song is still her specialty; in Woman to Woman, she covers a broad spectrum of emotions, from mistrust to exasperation and wrath. Although he seldom speaks directly to female listeners, Cole nevertheless writes songs that will resonate with those who are female and have experienced heartbreak in a love relationship. As usual, deteriorating romantic connections are a hot topic.
The intricate songwriting of Get It Right, the storyline of the title track (in which Cole and Ashanti find out they're dating the same man and respond with sympathy and women's solidarity), and the flirtatious lightness of a touch of the-Dream's production of Hey Sexy, which marks a certain lightening of mood in the album's closing stages, all point to a newfound panache rather than a drastic change in style. Cole's captivating vocals are the album's strongest suit; on standout heartbreaker Trust and Believe, which begins with a rumble and fades into a dreamy ambiance thanks to reverberating finger snaps, Cole sings about an ex who dumped her for her best friend.