There’s no shortage of favors that a good beat can do for a song, and no matter how you cut up the new work “Big Momma” from Lisa G. Allen, rhythm is absolutely one of the best things this song has going for it. While Allen doesn’t have to lean on the groove to make the mood tangible to the audience, she’s having a lot of fun letting some indulgence into the mix, if for no other reason than to give her vocal as much of a vibrant backdrop as possible. She’ll make something moving out of the seemingly simplistic, which is a lot harder than anyone in this business will tell you it has to be in 2022.
The harmonies in this track are something I was immediately intrigued by, and when Ronnue is backing up Allen I think their raw chemistry automatically becomes the most exciting detail of the music. We’re not to spread our focus thin when breaking down a work like “Big Momma,” and I think the condensed nature of the main single’s mix affirms this.
We’re being directed towards the wallop of the collective rather than specific intricacies that would otherwise have a hard time holding our interest by the time we got halfway through the song. Efficiency is one of the most underrated attributes I think a player can have in this department, and though she still loves elements of excess, there’s no getting around Allen’s straightforwardness here as well.
Allen’s music video for “Big Momma” puts some spotlight on her chemistry with Ronnue but ultimately epitomizes the attitude she brings with her into the studio rather than anything else.
You don’t need a lot of props to get us interested in the elements of aesthetical indulgence here, and I think the lack of visual detail is what makes it so much easier to connect with the music regardless of the format in which we’re listening to it. There’s something very special about an artist who is able to cut away from the predictable content in the mainstream with as much ease as this player does, and if she can maintain this standard throughout her career she’s going to find a lot more success outside of the underground than she will within it.
I’m looking forward to hearing what Lisa G. Allen can come up with next, and although her forward-center persona is by far one of the more aggressively enjoyable that has landed on my desk in the past few months, it’s not so character-based as to steer our attention away from the technical proficiencies in “Big Momma.” From beginning to end and arrangement to performance, Allen and Ronnue really sound simpatico both here and in the different remixes of the song as I’ve heard them thus far, and being that this is still so early on in the international career of the former, I don’t believe it’s going to get anything but better for her sound moving forward into the future.
Chadwick Easton