Ke$ha is ready to hit the charts again with the release of her new album, and not so surprisingly she’s transformed herself from an Animal to a Cannibal. Cannibal is the title of her new EP which was released on November 19th, 2010. She has tacked the EP on to her previous debut, Animal. Cannibal is a confusing story as we see Ke$ha trying to offer something new, something a little more mature - but it just doesn’t work. Losing focus from how she’s established herself as an artist so far, she attempts to pull off emotionally charged ballads, while still trying to go mainstream and have Animal moments present. She ultimately loses the fierce factor we may have thought would come with a title like Cannibal and does not move forward as an artist.
“We R Who We R” has been the first released single off Cannibal and it is, of course, extremely popular. Driven by pulsating synthesized beats and in-the-middle-of-partying lyrics, "We R Who We R" is dominating the charts. It debuted as number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached the top five in Canada, New Zealand and number one in Australia. This track is following in the same footsteps as her other internationally popular hit, “Tik Tok”. The two are in fact not that different; Ke$ha’s “trademark” auto-tuned voice is there as well as the club vibes, synthesizers, simple lyrics and eccentrically spelled titles. The one separation between the two is that “We R Who We R” was inspired by the bullying that led to several suicides of gay youth while “Tik Tok” was inspired by partying. Unfortunately, she doesn’t do that great of a job sending that message out; it still comes off as a song about partying and not much more, considering part of the chorus says: “We’re dancing like we’re dumb/our bodies go numb/we’ll be forever young/you know we’re superstars.” It’s hard to make the connection between that and the harassment of gay youth.
“Sleazy” and “Blow” brings us back to the Animal-esque Ke$ha the most. “Sleazy”’s title speaks for itself - it’s all about Ke$ha wanting to get sleazy. The essential message is that money doesn’t mean anything when it comes to her sexuality - being rich and pretentious has nothing to do with who she gets raunchy with. “Blow”, whose title may make you hesitant before listening, doesn’t add to her sex addict caricature, but goes back to her party animal tendencies. It’s purely a pulsating dance floor anthem about a club that’s about to blow because Ke$ha and her friends just got their party on. As quickly as we are introduced back to her shameless, wild side we’re taken away from it with “The Harold Song” - a ballad about her first love. She shows her fragile, sensitive side on this track as she sings the chorus; “They say that true love hurts, well this could almost kill me/young love murder, that is what this must be/and I would give it all, to not be sleeping alone/the life is fading from me/while you watch my heart bleed.” This would be a complete cliché blow if it weren’t Ke$ha, out of all people, singing about being in love. Though it’s not the best ballad ever, she does well on this track and it would be interesting to see more of this style from her. Yet this new change doesn’t last very long either as “C U Next Tuesday” begins to play. On this track, “she attempts to mix her new found sensitivity with her old smarmy character without success.” (David Hayter from http://www.411mania.com) ‘C U Next Tuesday’ is actually a slang term for calling someone a cunt, which is what Ke$ha is doing in this song, with a strangely slow and gentle beat supporting her derogatory comments. This song is an odd follow up to the previous ballad, but it falls more in line with her previous enterprises.
Cannibal might have been a misleading title for this EP because Ke$ha doesn’t really show anymore of a fierce or outrageous side of herself than she did on Animal; she in fact lowered her standards. Fortunately the track “Cannibal”, which the EP was named after, is fresh and strong enough to stand on its own compared to everything else. Fueled with a handful of attitude, “Cannibal” is just plain cool, fun and intentional or not, sends out female empowerment. The beat is strong as is Ke$ha’s message: she won’t let herself be used as a toy, she’s the man-eater here.
Overall, the use of auto-tune and vocodors are as prominent in this EP as they have been ever since Ke$ha introduced herself to the music industry. Though we would like to see her mature, obviously maturity and Ke$ha should not be mixed. There were some brief movements towards more serious music on Cannibal, but it was overpowered by her mainstream ideals. She has found her niche in making messy, trashy and loud radio music. Even if she should leave the relieving teen angst strategies to Katy Perry, the pop world is eating Ke$ha up, just as she’s eating up her competition.