Well, the good news is that it’s no “Gigli.”
Jennifer Lopez’s much-anticipated new album “This Is Me… Now” — the sequel to 2002’s “This Is Me… Then,” which drops on Friday — once again revolves around her Hollywood love affair with “Gigli” co-star Ben Affleck.
But just like that much-maligned romantic comedy did in 2003, Lopez’s first studio album in 10 years — since 2014’s “A.K.A.” — proves yet again that sometimes art and amor just don’t mix.
First off, like most sequels, it pales compared to the original.
While it was hardly Janet Jackson’s “The Velvet Rope,” Rihanna’s “Anti” or Beyoncé’s anything, “This Is Me… Then” was probably J.Lo’s most “artistic” album.
Yes, it had two hit hip-pop bops in “Jenny from the Block” — which infamously featured Affleck in its video — and the lip-licking LL Cool J collab “All I Have.” But Lopez’s third studio LP also found the singer-actress digging for more emotional depth than she had shown on either 1999’s “On the 6” or 2001’s “J.Lo.”
But you know what? “On the 6” and “J.Lo” were ultimately better albums because Lopez played to her strengths with booty-shaking beats — the better to hoof it up in some killer couture — rather than heart-tugging feels.
And “This Is Me… Now” leans even more into J.Lover rather than J.Lo.
While the first single, “Can’t Get Enough” — another hip-pop bop that samples Alton Ellis’ ’60s reggae classic “I’m Still in Love with You” while nodding to Marcia Aitken’s 1977 version of the song— would’ve been a hit 20 years ago, the rest of Lopez’s ninth studio album finds the Bronx-born diva stuck in a romantic rut.
Now that she has finally found her happy ending after marrying Affleck in 2022 — 18 years after they called off their first engagement in 2004 — she’s lost the plot of what makes her J-to-the-Lo.
Although all the spotlight on Bennifer broke them up the first time around, Lopez doubles down on the PDA as Mrs. Affleck on “This Is Me… Now.”
“When I was a girl, they’d asked me what I’d be/A woman in love is what I grew up wanting to be,” she sings on the title-tune opener, one of the midtempo tracks that blur into one another.
It’s enough to make you want Pitbull to show up for some “On the Floor Pt. II”
As savvy a businesswoman as Lopez is, how she ever thought the public would want an album of all slow to midtempo love songs from her is beyond me.
Even Adele — with all of her emotive vocal powers — couldn’t have pulled this one off.
Maybe it’s a concession to being 54 now, but it’s hard to imagine even Affleck making it all the way through to the cringe closer “Greatest Love Story Never Told,” the Latin-laced ode to their love that closes the LP.
Let alone the fact that he would have already had to endure “Dear Ben Pt. II” — the sequel to “Dear Ben” from “This Is Me… Then” that nobody wanted, which arrives midway through Lopez’s new LP.
But by then, it’s more like, “Dear God.”
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