If I were a debuting artist in 2009, and were given the chance to pick a songwriter/producer to work with on my album, I would definitely go with The-Dream. Since making his big entry with ‘Umbrella’ back in 2007, Terius “The-Dream” Nash has been making hit after hit after hit. With this said, I was expecting nothing less than a good debut from Electrik Red.

The girls have exclusively worked with The-Dream, Tricky Stewart and L.O.S., the most notorious team of hitmakers in the industry, and their first single, ‘Drink In My Cup’, was great. But after a first listen to How To Be A Lady Volume 1, I’m stuck wondering how this could be created by the same people who just made Love Vs Money, one of the best albums to come out in a long time. Not only is the production a bit too poppy for my taste, but the songs doesn’t have half of the hit potential that we are used to when it comes to this team.

Of course, it’s not all bad. Leaked songs like ‘W.F.Y’ and the aforementioned ‘Drink In My Cup’ are good, and I could see songs like ‘Muah’ and ‘Kill Bill’ blowing up, though they might not have lyrics that are radio friendly enough to make that happen. With ‘9 To 5′ L.O.S shows once again that he’s one of the best producers at the moment, I’d love to get the instrumentals to that song. Other than that, the rest of the songs sound too much alike and nothing really stands out.

I can still see that the rnb world has room for a girl group like Electrik Red, especially since it’s so much focus on solo artists these days. But when it’s time for How To Be A Lady Volume 2, I hope they can work with more than just the leftovers from The-Dream’s next album.