Buy Now
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Dec 12, 2013Feathers excluded, art abstracted from the man, Black Panties is one of the finest albums of the year.
-
Dec 9, 2013Musically the album is on-point and lyrically it's prone to Kelly's customary laugh-out-loud clunkiness. Despite all that, though, Kelly has made another really great album.
-
Dec 6, 2013His 12th album, a return to wafting sex jams after two soulful dance discs, also falls short of the Kelly we love.
-
Dec 10, 2013The culture police might have hemorrhages listening to these uncensored tracks, but anyone with a sense of humor and an appreciation for smartly crafted mainstream R&B will appreciate the singer-songwriter’s return to his wild ways.
-
Dec 6, 2013What it lacks in lyrical depth it makes up for by being a catchy, entertaining and completely in the moment snapshot of the current turned up, hybrid of R&B and Rap for clubs and bedrooms.
-
Dec 10, 2013What we get is a pretty good modern R&B album, but it’s also one that feels just a bit fossilized.
-
Dec 10, 2013Regardless of the reason, it’s safe to say that Kelly is fighting all sorts of social norms on Black Panties, from sex talk to issues of race and economics. The way he’s going about the issues might be a little bit clunky, to say the least, but it’s admirable that he’s even tackling them.
-
Dec 10, 2013So-so cuts like "Right Back" and "All the Way," a meandering duet with Kelly Rowland, give the impression that the singer might've padded the album in his determination to get it out in time to capitalize on the renown he's established this year. But then he'll bust out a steamy slow jam as gorgeous--and as generous in spirit--as "Crazy Sex."
-
Feb 12, 2014Solid, but inconsequential.
-
Q MagazineJan 28, 2014Creatively there are signs he's struggling to keep it up. [Feb 2014, p.114]
-
Dec 10, 2013It’s the polarizing swing, though, between Kelly’s genius and his flagrant misogyny that makes an album like Black Panties enticing and frustrating in equal measure.
-
Dec 10, 2013Kells' voice remains one of the most flexible and inventive instruments in pop, but, even for him, Panties veers too frustratingly between horny and corny.
-
Dec 6, 2013Black Panties finds him getting back to his core business with rather less artistic ambition.
-
Dec 9, 2013Songs like "Cookie," "Crazy Sex" and "Legs Shakin'" start off as promises of highly skilled sexual attentions, but end up as to-do lists.
-
Dec 9, 2013Occasional resemblances to Drake and the-Dream are as blatant as the Isley Brothers and Michael Jackson exercises of Write Me Back. The similarities are so obvious that it's tough to discern if Kelly is acknowledging his younger followers, aiming to beat them at their game, or both.
-
Dec 9, 2013The onslaught of bawdy imagery eventually grows tedious, but there's something compelling about witnessing one man's psyche laid so completely bare, a crazed prophet whipped into a frenzy by the ecstasy of his own sin.
-
Dec 9, 2013Blunt and crass, 2013’s Black Panties is all about selling nostalgia for a bygone age of hard-body sexist black machismo that Barack Obama is, in his own quiet way, helping to deflate.
-
Dec 6, 2013Kelly is best when he is at his most absurd, comical and over-the-top.... Sometimes, the jokes go too far.
-
Jan 9, 2014Despite its positives, the album falls far short of the impressive musical peaks of Kelly’s discography.
-
Dec 12, 2013Despite flashes of melodic and lyrical inventiveness, production-wise Kelly sounds like he’s chasing innovators The-Dream and Mike WiLL Made It, especially on the strip club tracks.
-
Dec 12, 2013Mostly, these are exquisitely constructed slow jams--especially recent single ‘Cookies’, The-Dream-esque ‘Crazy Sex’ and the cashmere-soft, Kelly Rowland duet ‘All The Way’--but the pace becomes stagnant after a while.
-
Dec 9, 2013Ultimately, there isn't much to recommend with Black Panties.
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 9 out of 30
-
Mixed: 5 out of 30
-
Negative: 16 out of 30
-
Dec 10, 2013
-
Dec 10, 2013
-
Jan 21, 2014