Keri Hilson: No Boys Allowed – review

In her previous guise as a jobbing songwriter, Atlanta's Keri Hilson came up with major hits for the likes of Britney Spears and Mary J Blige, yet the ones she's saved for herself on her second album are, with the exception of the frantic electronic firework The Way You Love Me, too featureless to make an impression. Odder still, she's written only five of the 12 tracks, having ceded most of the songwriting responsibility to a crowd of men, including old pal Timbaland. But the real eyebrow-raiser is that an album ostensibly dedicated to the idea of female empowerment is so full of conventional sex-and-love piffle (including, of all things, a salacious slow jam with Rihanna's notorious ex, Chris Brown) and tributes to her own gorgeousness. The deceptively sugary, trilling Breaking Point does observe that some women "tolerate too damn much", but it's easily missed. Though Hilson sings like a sweet-voiced dream throughout, No Boys Allowed is muddled and devoid of the gutsiness the title leads us to expect.