Ashanti

On her sophomore effort, the queen of Murder Inc. lends her strong-but-sexy vocals to 20 tracks produced mostly by in-house beat maestro Irv Gotti. Chapter II spawned the hit single "Rock Wit U," but also features quality album cuts like the Barry White/Black Moon-influenced "Feels So Good" and "Then Ya Gone" with labelmate Chink Santana.

R&B princess trails the pack on follow-up album Ashanti's second album is filled with the
same beat-driven, slickly produced midtempo tracks and ballads that made up her debut.
There are no lazy, huge-chunk samples of hip-hop classics this time around, but the disc's
best moments have a decidedly old-school feel to them: "I Found Lovin' " recalls
Seventies-era Deniece Williams; "Breakup 2 Makeup" is a low-cal take on Chaka K... More >

Thug moll no more, Ashanti posits the musical question, "Why do gangsta boys go out with candy-pop girls?" Beyond some Mary moves and her sample-ready "awww baby," the sole outright attraction of her pathologically modest follow-up is "Then Ya Gone," which turns out to be about lovers dying rather than lovers leaving--although at Murder Inc., leaving is all they do, right? (Grade - C)