The concept of reality is at the heart of everything K. Michelle does. It isn’t just that her career took off following her appearance in VH1’s reality series Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta, but it’s in the way she expresses her feelings: brazen and unapologetic, K. Michelle opens up every element of herself to audiences, hiding nothing. In the UK, she’s still a niche concern, but in the USA she’s an r&b star, topping the charts with her previous two albums. More Issues Than Vogue draws from hip-hop, pop and even country, but at its centre is a traditional soul diva, struggling with a range of emotions bigger than herself.
K. Michelle comes from the Mary J. Blige mould of r&b – a rich, belting voice, equal parts tragedy and toughness – and has purist tendencies: however brave her genre experiments get, there’s no escaping that this is very much an r&b album. Lead single ‘Not A Little Bit’ is about as far removed from contemporary trends as possible, a moving-on ballad that seems lifted out of the 90’s, her voice a powerhouse of Whitney Houston acrobatics set against an arrangement that veers close to chintzy. It’s disarming in the way her wounded delivery rubs up against the stately production – and yet it manages to remain one of the tamer moments on the album. ‘Nightstand’ disguises a cutting disregard for others via sparkly neo-soul, slipping in typically inappropriate lyrics such as ‘just dissed this n**** for my vibrator.’ ‘All I Got’ is a surface-level love song, but punctures its romantic atmosphere with its one-night-stand lyrical situation.
But More Issues Than Vogue does more than reconfigure r&b tropes. ‘Make The Bed’, a duet with Jason Derulo, is 80’s-leaning stadium pop that echoes Taylor Swift and Carly Rae Jepsen, while ‘Sleep Like A Baby’ is a shimmering slow disco groove. The best points on the album come when K. Michelle reaches beyond expectations: ‘If It Ain’t Love’ is a country ballad, right down its steel guitars and waltz tempo, and K. Michelle performs it with an apocalyptic heartbreak; while the Trina-featuring “Rich” is a hip-hop club anthem, a capitalist fantasy of decadence – ‘Don’t care if you don’t like me/Cos I’m rich.’
The cover of More Issues Than Vogue shows a collage of put-downs and rumours, ranging from implied personality defects to mental health issues and physical criticisms. K. Michelle claims ownership of every weakness, balancing a dichotomy of empowerment and vulnerability and finding a source of strength. She is more than a great voice: she’s a skilled interpreter and performer, able to reach for the biggest notes and deliver the most drama, but managing to convey doubt and failure with a range of subtleties. She might seem larger-than-life, but it’s those cracks in the armour that make her so relatable and so empathetic. More Issues Than Vogue is a frustrating listen – she’s got more star power than this album suggests. But at the same time, it’s such a convincing portrait of the messy contradictions that constitute the human condition – a mix of pride and self-loathing, of shamelessness and self-awareness – that it’s impossible to doubt the intent behind it. More Issues Than Vogue is an authentic celebration of real life in all its ugliness.
