It’s tough these days for a female singer-MC to distinguish herself amid mega-hyped contemporaries like M.I.A. and Santigold. Philadelphia’s Amanda Blank has a battering flow that’s all her own, but she doesn’t manage to step out of her forebears’ shadows—in fact, she name-drops the former and samples the latter on her full-length debut, I Love You. She also throws a dash of Peaches-aping foul-mouthed electroclash into the mix for good measure.
Which isn’t to say that I Love You suffers from its many points of comparison. Blank’s mélange of hip-hop and club sounds of the last five years often gels into something greater than the sum of its parts, particularly when backed by stuttering production from Diplo and Switch on highlights like “Lemme Get Some” and the LL Cool J homage “A Love Song.” Blank seems most comfortable on more rap-heavy, party-starting tracks like the predictable but infectious album-opener “Make It Take It” and the Romeo Void redux “Might Like You Better.” But she frequently indulges the “singer” side of her hyphenate as well, with more mixed results: “Shame On Me” is the best Santigold track never released, but the Lykke Li-guesting “Leaving You Behind” closes the record on a muddled, uninspiring note. Still, while Blank’s reference-heavy, mix-tape mentality isn’t radical in the current musical climate, it’s often fun in its familiarity.