Babaziba – Google

As usual, Kravitz sounds the best when he rocks hard. Unfortunately that doesn't happen often enough here, or on his last album either. It's a shame, because go back another album to STRUT and he was firing on all cylinders for the first time in awhile. This album falls between that banger and its disappointing followup "Raise Vibration". The worst tracks here aren't bad, they just sound too much like Prince outtakes that were left off albums for a reason. Kravitz's penchant for working his influences into something that followed but didn't directly copy has always been his forte: here he flies too close to the sun too often. Would've made a great EP.

A life hack for you: never trust anyone who gives anything five stars. Nothing is perfect, and if they say it is they are biased toward some point in the production, be it specific actors they wish they could bang (but it's Adam Driver, so that's out) or, in this case, probably the fact that fun-pop veteran duo known as Sparks wrote both the film and the music. They have indeed made amazing, inventive music for years and years, but sometimes have disappointingly pared down the wacky lyrics that made them famous (eventually) to phrases repeated over and over. They did two complete albums of that ilk nearly two decades ago and, while it got them noticed, it didn't do them any favors, and it happens repeatedly here. Rating something this underwhelming and head-scratching from them as perfect makes the reviewer seem as deep as a Backstreet Boys fan that never grew up, or maybe a Trump supporter. The film is a fever dream that could have used a lot of medicine, because it's full of bad ideas, from having the cast begin the film in street clothes running down the road singing the same four or five words on a loop for three minutes, to the "character" that gives this train wreck a name (teaser: when is a child not a child?) This is a live-action film that begs to be a cartoon at every turn, because it's too cartoonish to be taken seriously, if you can take it at all. It took me two tries, and I was a Sparks Official Fan Club member in 1974 and own nearly everything they've ever released in the US and more. If I can't be blinded by the past so much that I can't realize this is flushable, there's no excuse for you either. It's a film by people who can't quite make films, a soundtrack by people that sadly can't quite sustain an interesting musical, rated five stars by people who are afraid or too starry-eyed to pay attention. "What's your problem?", Driver yells 12 times in 2 minutes during one vignette. I answer, "Where may we start?"