I’m not a big fan of the tailend of Cowboy Carter. I wouldn’t say the songs in that part of the album are flat out terrible. They just don’t hit for me the way the songs in the first half of it do. With “Ameriican Requem”, “16 Carriages”, “Protector”, “Daughter” and “Bodyguard”, I feel that there’s no real way to make them better than they are. Whereas with “Riiverdance”, “II Hands II Heaven” and “” I have notes. And when I had the idea of doing a mashup of Beyoncé’s “II Hands II Heaven” and Brandy’s “Necessary”, I knew it’d work. But I never expected to play the shit out of it the way I have done since I first made it. Yeah. I play my own mashups. Because if I don’t love them, how the hell they gonna be loved by anybody else?
Slight side note. I’ve always liked “Necessary”. I think the non Timbaland produced cuts on Afrodisiac get massively overlooked.
Aside from the fact that much like Beyoncé, Brandy has a voice which just works with everything, she also has the kind of tone which works for the sounds which are on Cowboy Carter, as was evidenced by some of the songs on her 2008 album Human and earlier in her career in 1999 with “Almost Doesn’t Count”, which was originally composed as a country song.
It was even covered and released as such.
I’d quite like for Brandy to get back on her shit and give me a new album. Nothing after Afrodisiac has given me quite what I need from her.
