For somebody who’s just released her third studio album, Ciara seems strangely short on confidence in her own abilities. The album, Fantasy Ride, comes in a cardboard jacket which features a silhouette from the hit video Love Sex Magic, where she teams up with crooner Justin Timberlake. Ciara has been around since her debut Goodies in 2004, so why should the publicity for this album depend on this single?

The answer comes to you as you listen to the album. While on the whole, it is a danceable compilation, the only track that stays in your head once you turn off the music is Love Sex Magic. This, despite the fact that the album features other hip hop and R ‘n’ B heavyweights, like Ludacris and Missy Elliott. And riding the Indophile wave in music, there’s even one track, Turntables featuring Chris Brown, which opens with AR Rahman’s Kehna Hi Kya from the 1995 hit Bombay.

There are many things wrong here. Ciara has a nice, soft voice that is most in evidence in the opening track Ciara to the Stage. But, the music is low-key most of the time; in the other tracks where the music pulsates with energy, Ciara lets her vocals meekly fade into the background. Love Sex Magic, in fact, belongs more to Timberlake than to the lady. This is fatal in an overcrowded market, where singers like Beyonce and Rihanna give their songs their full-throated best. The music here just seems so dated and worse, jaded, like Ciara didn’t quite believe in it herself. She’s not taken any risks with either the sound or the lyrics—she’s referenced high fashion brands like Louis Vuitton and Christian Louboutin in High Price, something that’s become a bit of a staple with glamour-obsessed hip-hoppers. That is probably why studying the album packaging is more rewarding than listening to the album itself. The monotonous music doesn’t quite match up to the sumptuousness of images of Ciara in various superhero costumes. She’s living out her fantasies in this sense. If only the music had been part of it.

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