Divas Gettin' Money, Round 2

Remember when I told you that creativity was dead? I forgot to add Ciara to the list of perpetrators.

Spending my Friday night on Wikipedia as per usual, I happened to stumble upon this little blurb about Ciara's upcoming album: "Fantasy Ride introduces Ciara's comic book character, Super C. Ciara said that Super C is a character she becomes when she performs onstage and in her music videos. The Super C character is set to become a major factor in Fantasy Ride promotion. She is a futuristic superhero-esque Ciara, based on the robotic character Ciara portrayed in the "Go Girl" music video."

Does that ring any bells?

SASHA FIERCE. Duh.

Having an R&B alter ego is sooooo 2008. Ciara could just name her album "I Follow Trends" and nobody would notice. I don't care if Ciara spent over nine months designing the artwork with comic artist Bernard Chang -- rule number one in pop music is that it doesn't matter when you start something, the only thing that counts is when you show it to people. I am sure the idea for "Super C" was perhaps the only lightbulb that has ever gone off inside her head that her record label would actually pay for.

But seriously, this has Sasha Fierce written all over it. Just compare her space robot costume in "Go Girl" to Sasha's outfit in "Diva." Yeah, the music video came out in October, a little bit before I Am Sasha Fierce hit shelves. But A) Super C had yet to be unveiled and B) I actually bought the Sasha Fierce album. Ciara doesn't even have a release date.

Which brings me to the number two rule in pop music: rule number one can be overruled if your song is totally boss. Besides the whole not-having-a-release-date-because-your-single-sucks piece of evidence, you can also look at Ciara's oh-so-entertaining cover of Sasha Fierce's "Diva." That's the straw that broke the camel's back, where the camel is Ciara's credibility.

I actually had a glimmer of hope for Ciara when I heard the next single off the album, "Never Ever," which features Young Jeezy, who apparently is still relevant. This is a slow song that actually sounded good enough for me to shell out a dollar on iTunes.

Then I found out the entire chorus is sampled from this song. Epic fail.

While Ciara searches for a release date I'm happy to report that Keri Hilson finally got one! What's her secret, you might ask? Well, for you and Ciara's information, she wrote a song that didn't suck and was completely original. That's hard to come by these days, isn't it?

Here's the tracklisting for In A Perfect World, which drops on the 24th of this month:

1. In A Perfect World (Intro)
2.Turnin Me On (featuring Lil Wayne)
3. Get Your Money Up (featuring Keyshia Cole & Trina)
4. Return the Favor (featuring Timbaland)
5. Knock You Down (featuring Ne-Yo & Kanye West)
6. Slow Dance
7. Make Love
8. Intuition
9. How Does It Feel?
10. Hey Girl (featuring T-Pain & Lil Jon)
11. Alienated
12. Tell Him the Truth
13. Change Me (featuring Akon)
14. Energy
15. Where Did He Go

I managed to get my hands on a little sampler of the album. "Slow Dance" is basically what a well-written Ciara slow song would look like if it existed and if Ciara could sing better. I'm pretty positive "Change Me" is a re-titled version of the leaked version of "Mic Check," and "Knock You Down" is a cheerful, bouncy synth-jam. Good for spring, no? "Alienated," an album highlight, is a total space jam in the best way possible. Can't wait.