Ella Mai Portrays A Range Of Emotions In Her Breath-taking Debut R&B Album
The English R&B and hip hop musician Ella Mai released her self-titled debut studio album in October 2018 through 10 Summers and Interscope Records. This is predominantly an R&B album where her unique vocals, candid lyrics, dark synths, percussions and other instrumentation have been clearly visible that portrays Ella Mai’s potential as a R&B star. It portrays a lot of emotions and relationships, from finding a partner to ignorance and cheating. The album has a total of sixteen tracks that includes the digital bonus track “Naked” as well, with an overall time length of approximately fifty six minutes. However, another track "Boo'd Up (Remix)" that features Nicki Minaj and Quavo was included as a Japanese Bonus track. The pre-released singles “Boo’d Up” and “Trip” were included in the album as well. The album also features guest appearances from singer/songwriters like Chris Brown, John Legend and H.E.R. The album mostly received good reviews from the music critics and listeners. Albumism rated the album 4.5 out of 5 stars, while NME and The Guardian both rated it 4 out of 5 stars. Regarding the album, NME said, “It’s an impossibly confident debut, filled with slick production and choruses that’ll be caught in your head for weeks at a time. Confident, relevant and full of gorgeous instrumentation, Ella Mai’s debut proves that she is more than worth the hype”. The Rolling Stone magazine and the British newspaper The Observer both rated it 3 out of 5 stars, and Rolling Stone described the music in the album as “an ubiquitous, record-setting sing-along, from a previously unknown artist, no less”. Also, Pitchfork gave a decent rating of 6.6 out of 10 saying that “The perfectly fine debut from the London R&B singer offers a grip of retro, snappy jams without sounding like a pastiche”. It received a good overall rating of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic. The album debuted at number eighteen on the UK Albums (OCC) chart. Furthermore, it reached the fifth position on US Billboard 200 and fourth position on US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums (Billboard) chart. Moreover, the album was featured on the music charts in several other countries as well. Overall, this debut album by the twenty four year old R&B artist is worth listening to.