Don Cash, II

Don Cash sees himself as part of a line of innovators that stretches back to Chuck Berry. He calls his music "new wave hip-hop", although, when asked, he often just calls it rock'n'roll; he has also been compared to Prince. You put II on eagerly and expect to be dazzled. But nearly an hour later, you think: whoever Don Cash is, he's having a laugh. The album isn't entirely rubbish - bits of it are almost quite good, largely because they sound like other things that are much better. Disco Wreck (a very now title, very Calvin Harris) sounds a bit like Green Velvet's immense floor-filler La La Land. A nasal tone, no doubt meant to imply that Cash "has the funk", doesn't help his underdeveloped sense of melody. His enthusiastically banal rhyming and Fisher-Price beats just make him sound inept. Anyone for the Terence Trent D'Arby of underground dance?