[Single Review] JoJo – Demonstrate
It’s accurate to say that JoJo‘s cover of Drake’s “Marvin’s Room” probably drummed up more attention than her so-called comeback single, “Disaster”. “Marvin’s Room” became a viral hit last year, racking up 28 million views on its official Youtube page and inspiring a cover-of-a-cover from 2NE1′s fierce leader CL, as opposed to “Disaster”, which spent about five seconds on the Hot 100 and is still sitting around 8 million Youtube views.
The people have spoken, letting JoJo know that it’s urban music fitting of her 21-years that they want — not rehashes of the old hits that originally made her a teen star. JoJo’s listened, snagging “Marvin’s Room” mastermind (and Drake’s BFF) Noah “40″ Shebib to craft her new single, “Demonstrate”.
Shebib puts a more sensual spin on his usual template of moody melancholia on “Demonstrate”, creating a cloudy atmosphere of alt-urban for JoJo to play with. There’s a lot of unexpected changes in the production, beginning with some Prince-y guitar strings at the start, then running running through to sudden bursts of staccato and suction-y splashes in the background that sound like the song’s being momentarily pulled into a black hole. JoJo matches Shebib’s production prowess by running the vocal gamut, working out her versatile voice in a way that The Weeknd and Drake aren’t able to do when tacking similar-sounding songs.
And yes, JoJo is singing about sex, but don’t act surprised — homegirl has been wailing about getting fucked since the underrated “In The Dark” dropped two years ago.
Ultimately, Drake and the permanently-depressed The Weeknd are still the masters of this gloomy alt-urban niche, and the way that Kelly Rowland has recently married the genre with the more traditional sounds of top forty R&B deserves a lot more credit than it’s gotten, but it’s refreshing to see JoJo moving forward with her music and getting more experimental on her singles, rather than just her mixtape releases.
Score: 3.75/5
