**OLD EDIT** Corinne Stevens for Art Nouveau (never published)

“No Vaseline: Corinne Stevens, doesn’t KO, but leaves the ring swinging”
Corinne Stevens sounds like a raging bull in the corner of the ring with her modern The Oddity; Careful, mess with the bull—you get the horns.
Review by Marcus Scott
Art Nouveau Magazine

The sound is proverbial, its kitsch and on first listen, its even a futurist in the current music scene. With its spacey gush-of-wind computer synth voiceover, Corinne Stevens’ “The Oddity” explodes into a robot psychedelic hip-hop tinkering time bomb. Just listen to the cellular ringtone-inspired “Club Kidz”—a marching band sound, megaphone hip-hop revolutionized club tune that sounds like a hybrid of power tool industrialized N.E.R.D. production and a slick Kayne West electrosynth orchestration. But what sells an interesting record? The crafting is in small hooks: The lyric-savvy Stevens’ even combats the Nas ideology which has infamously brought clamor amongst music critics about the fall of hip-hop: “Hip-hop will never be dead, until it’s gone and buried,” Stevens’ echoes.
Stevens is an oddity, but doesn’t do the extraordinary. Yes, it’s all here—the old school hip-hop jive (“Across the Globe”), the hip-hop Neo-soul flows (“Morning Sunrise”), even the funky UK grime backbeats (“Lets Go!”). What works is the sexy, automaton wah-wah club sound that radiates from Stevens’ gender bending vocals (“I am Glam Right Now”) and interesting cipher in lyrics which talk about everything under the sun from growing in the ghetto to rehashing issues to emanating self.
There are some dead spots on the record. “Set you Free,” a snappy techno groove is nothing special. Its simple delivery is extremely contemporary in the music at the moment and if released to a deejay’s devices may receive little airplay in the club markets because of its empty synthpop sound. In comparison to other smooth tracks like Omarion’s “Entourage” or even some of MC Lite’s earlier work, this single alone draws to many comparisons to contemporaries like Lil’ Mama and Kid Sister. T
Between skits, Stevens quotes that she’d like to create her own genre. But, it’s too contemporary, and the music doesn’t resonate or may have the resilience or stamina to be played infinite at one’s discretion. Key point: The record needs more hormonal diversity. With its fidget-funky buzzing loops and berserk-drumbeat jazz, a strategy that’s worked for quite some time on standard radio, Stevens has unfortunately worn the dunce-hat for repetition and the album is more of the same.
Nonetheless, with such a unique, urban-queen-in-distress vocal (something missing in hip-hop) and a solid rap scheme (also missing), this may very well be a simple work out for Stevens.

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