Assorted

This album get's 3 and a half stars. En Vogue's first attempt at working with new producers is a great idea. The only problem is that they may have chosen the wrong producers to work with (with the exception of Organized Noize.) EV3's standout tracks are "Whatever" produced by Babyface, "Don't Let Go (Love)" by Organized Noize, "Too Gone, Too Long" by David Foster and "Damn I Wanna Be Your Lover" by Ivan Matias. While a good idea to branch out and try working with new producers, some of the producers were unable to capture what En Vogue is capable of and result in producing less than outstanding tracks for the group. Long time producers Foster/McElroy didn't produce as well as they're capable of either.



EV3 - a must have for En Vogue fans. Should En Vogue work with other producers in the future, they should make sure to choose eminent producer's (Organized Noize, DarkChild, P. Diddy, Missy Elliot, David Foster, The Neptunes...)

CLASSINESS AND LONELINESS

EV3 came in a time R&B tunes didn't gave to much space for funkyness, the deaprture of Dawn Robinson to a supposed solo career didn't hurt the group in the vocal aspect, perhaps, what went wrong in EV3 wasn't the lack of another girl to make the quartet, in fact was the quality production that the group lack of. "Whatever" the outstanding track of this album, was a slow funky R&B tune that somehow aimed for better airplay that it ultimate received, and of course was the only saveable track. The hole album is influence in that slow R&B beat, not the funky jams of En Vogue that fans were acostume to. Even the highly anticipated ballad produced by no other than David Foster "Too Gone, Too Long" felt in the space of being pure pop, and pretty close too be another flop, but the voices of each En Vogue member shine, specially Maxine's in the bridge part of the song, something that it's caracteristic of EV3 is that was really crowed by filler cuts and really bad ones. In the name of music the only other joint that can be saved from being lost in creativityless, are "Eyes Of A Child" poppy friendly song. Despite the singles releases, and the later mention this album was such a dissapointment for many fans that expected a little more from the "Funky Divas" because after this they should be call "The Amazing Boring Divas".

EV3

I enjoyed this disc and can't say that I noticed a severe drop off in vocal with the loss of Dawn. Although I do agree that her spunk & sassiness balanced the maturity of the other three women. The tracks are a bit different that on their previous albums because Tommy & Denzil only produced/arranged 5 of the 12 tracks & because of their unique understanding of the ladies' voices, the other tracks suffer a bit because they do not sound like the EnVogue sound that I liked but I tried not to compare this disc to their previous ones.

That being said, I still enjoyed 7 out of the 12 tracks which counts as a successful purchase to me. The funkiest cut of them all is "Let It Flow" which gets me up dancing everytime I play it. Other standouts are: Whatever, Don't Let Go, Damn I Wanna Be Your Lover, Too Gone, Too Long, Sittin By Heaven's Door, What a Difference a Day Makes & Does Anybody Hear Me.