I dunno about this review - I mean, I stand by it, but it took me longer than I'd like to make and I'm not sure I'm entirely pleased with it. Eh, it happens. In any case, next up will probably be Ayreon, because my review of The Neighborhood is taking a sour turn to say the least. Hopefully a release from one of my favourite acts will cheer me up...
As those of you who have been following this series for a while probably know, I'm Canadian - and what you probably don't know is that Canadian radio and charts are a little bit different than the charts you find in the States. First is that outside of a few acts, hip-hop doesn't really have a huge amount of groundswell on Canadian charts - sure, we get the big names, but not a huge amount outside of that. Secondly, outside of Alberta and Saskatchewan, we didn't normally use to get a lot of country music either - which changed this year, thanks to the heavy mainstream push with regards to country music, with heavily mixed results. Thirdly, and most importantly, we have something called the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission, otherwise known as the CRTC. This government-backed commission is responsible for making sure Canadian content has a chance on our radio in the face of American competition. So in other words, Americans, if you thought you were sick of Nickelback and Justin Bieber - well, you haven't heard anything yet. But if I'm being honest, I actually support the CRTC regulations a fair bit, mostly because there's a ton of great Canadian content that most people south of the border will never hear thanks to the overwhelming amount of American material. And the fact that bands like Metric and Marianas Trench can occasionally land some chart success here not only means rock didn't really go away up here, but that the charts maintained some of that genre diversity that can get lost on the American Hot 100. Our charts are probably a little bit closer to the British charts, in that we tend to have a bit more international crossover with upcoming trends and we get more chart oddballs (although most of ours have a distinctly Canadian bent). So with that in mind, I think I have something of a duty to cover at least some Canadian content that passes by me, so let's talk about the debut album from Kay. She's a pop/hip-hop singer who initially got some viral buzz back in 2011, and a little more success courtesy of a collaboration with Pusha T last year. She's had some difficulty getting a breakthrough hit, but hey, she got picked up by Universal so she must be doing something right. So, with that in mind, how does her debut album My Name Is Kay turn out?
