Jason Derülo "Jason Derülo" album

- Release date : March 2010 -

Jason Derulo is the debut album by pop recording artist Jason Derülo released on March 2, 2010. The album was produced by J.R. Rotem and features the hit singles, "Whatcha Say", which reached number-one on the US Hot 100, "In My Head", which has reached number-one on the UK Singles Chart and "Ridin' Solo" which marks Derülo's third consecutive number-one in the UK R&B Chart.

“It’s definitely a music lover’s album,” Derulo says. “It reflects all my different influences, but it’s deeply rooted in pop. My vision for the album was to make music that would impact the world. And by that I mean that music is a healing thing. When you play your favorite song, you can forget all your troubles for three minutes. I want to provide those getaway moments for people.” To that end, Derulo recorded more than 300 songs that he narrowed down to the nine that appear on the album. “I wanted to make sure I had something special that would endure and sound timeless,” Derulo says.

Derulo wrote or co-wrote each track on the album, which was produced by Rotem, who has also worked with Rihanna, Leona Lewis, Rick Ross, and many others. “J.R. is a musician like myself, and has the ability to work within all different types of genres,” Derulo says. “We were able to experiment in the studio, which was really important to me because I want to break down barriers and do things that have never done before.” The album features songwriting contributions from such in-demand hit-makers as Claude Kelly (Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You,” Britney Spears’ “Circus,” Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA”), Evan Bogart (Beyonce’s “Halo,” Rihanna’s “S.O.S.”), and Alex James (Adam Lambert’s “Sure Fire Winners,” Tata Young “My Bloody Valentine”).

The album debuted at #11 on the Billboard 200 with 42,273 copies sold in its first week released. The album debuted at #8 on the UK Albums Chart and has since moved down in the following weeks, until July 25 when it started to rise again. It is currently at its debuting peek of #8 after 24 weeks in the chart.

"Jason Derülo" album tracks and lyrics

• Whatcha Say lyrics
• Ridin' Solo lyrics
• In My Head lyrics
• The Sky's The Limit lyrics
• What If lyrics
• Love Hangover lyrics
• Encore lyrics
• Fallen lyrics
• Blind lyrics
• Strobelight lyrics [International Bonus Track]
• Queen Of Hearts lyrics [iTunes & Japanese Bonus Track]
• Whatcha Say (Acoustic Version) lyrics [iTunes & Japanese Bonus Track]
• In My Head (Remix) lyrics [iTunes & Japanese Bonus Track]

"Jason Derülo" album reviews

Even though he began his career writing hits for the likes of Diddy and Sean Kingston, singer/songwriter Jason Derülo always had his eye on becoming a solo performer. His Auto-Tuned, Imogen Heap-sampling debut single, “Watcha Say,” was an infectious, slick, and on-point way to launch a career, but his debut album is less satisfying, even with plenty of the same well-crafted, future R&B as his breakthrough tune. Since Derulo seems entirely devoted to the song, the problem may lie with the album format itself. This one barely fits the definition at a scant nine songs, and there’s little attention paid to the overall flow, but if you want R&B that sparkles and dazzles, there are nine quick fixes here, each one just dying to get stuck in your head. The talented J.R. Rotem handles the production for the whole show, blurring the lines between dance-pop and R&B on highlights like “In My Head.” It’s clever how “The Sky’s the Limit” knicks a bit of “Flashdance (What a Feeling)” for its melody, and the bright and shiny “Love Hangover” is equally ‘80s-flavored besides being a rock-solid tune. As a performer, the smooth Derulo -- made even smoother by Auto-Tune -- delivers it all so effortlessly that none of that persuasive debut hunger comes through, making this stylish and short set one to admire rather than advocate.

*** by David Jeffries, All Music Guide ***

BBC chart blog critic Fraser McAlpine summarised baby-faced American-Haitian RnB superstar Jason Derülo thusly, in a review of his single In My Head: “(he) is basically a one-man Lynx advert, where the version of reality he would most like to see happen is straight out of a 14-year-old boy's ideal of what girls are really like.”

If it wasn’t for the desire to get at least somewhere close to a rough-guide word count, we could just leave things there. This is music that rings shrilly with a deafening hollowness, an unashamed fakery akin to a dream-state where fantasy and reality have become mixed and hopelessly muddied. In Derülo’s world, the everyday is always a neat place to be, with saucy encounters only a shopping trip away and where every conversation is characterised by completely ridiculous Auto-Tune’d vocoder vocals.

Honestly, was nobody paying attention when Jay-Z released Death of Auto-Tune? That’s Jay-Z… y’know, the massively successful hip hop star who artists like Derülo should look up to as an example of an outsider overcoming the majority on largely his own terms. When Jay-Z releases an album, critics care; when he releases a single, the download-guzzling public go crazy for it. He’s harnessed a difficult dichotomy – mainstream acceptance and the respect of music writers who used to determine what was hot, and what was absolutely not.

Assessed on such old-school terms, this self-titled album is as hot as the frozen chicken fillets that’ve been sitting in the bottom of your freezer since you cancelled that barbecue at the last minute in the summer of 2006. You should chuck them out, really, but they’re lodged in there whether you like it or not. Again, a parallel presents itself: as undeniably terrible as these songs are, a select few do bore in deeply, albeit against one’s wishes.

Which, to an extent, is the sign of a fine pop song. On the other hand, the Crazy Frog did okay for himself (himself, right? He had a ding-a-ling, didn’t he?), and that song ranks among the ‘Greatest’ Pop Abominations Ever. So, yes, Whatcha Say – which rips both Imogen Heap and a not-particularly-funny Saturday Night Live sketch – and In My Head have a certain catchiness to them, and What If and Blind raise unintentional smiles. But all sorts of diseases are catchy, too, and just like Derülo’s debut album, you want rid of them as soon as possible.

*** by Mike Diver, BBC Music ***

This 20-year-old Miami native hit No. 1 last year with ''Whatcha Say,'' a tasty club-pop confection built atop a sizable chunk of Imogen Heap's 2005 hit ''Hide and Seek.'' On Jason Derulo, though, Derulo has trouble making an impression. Sure, his precision-geared vocals are 
teen-dreamy enough, but tracks like the robo-folky ''Encore'' and the dreary piano ballad ''What If''' sound pilfered from Ne-Yo's discard pile. One exception: ''The Sky's the Limit,'' which liberally samples the theme from Flashdance. C+

*** by Mikael Wood, Entertainment Weekly ***

"Nine hits, one album" claims the sticker on the front of this 20-year-old Floridian's debut – an optimistic way of selling a record that's produced precisely two hits to date. To give Jason Derülo credit, though, there will undoubtedly be more. He's followed an increasingly well-trodden path to R&B success by first serving an apprenticeship as a songwriter (for Lil' Wayne, Diddy, et al), so he's got the craft of making modern, hyper-slick tunes nailed. It's no surprise that his first single, the Imogen Heap-sampling Whatcha Say, sold 3m downloads: its chattering beat, and deceptively simple hookline add up to incredible catchiness. He achieves the same infectiousness on The Sky's the Limit, with its Flashdance … What a Feeling sample. The busy production feels impersonal, though, and producer JR Rotem has made far too free with the Auto-Tune, robbing Derülo of the idiosyncrasies that make an album worth hearing.

*** by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian ***

On three singles from Jason Derulo's self-titled debut album, he starts the song by enthusiastically crooning his own name. It's a pretty goofy thing for the young singer to do, but the third-person shout-out to himself makes a certain sense after taking in the whole record. Derulo tackles an array of earnest trance-pop, glossy guitar rock and buttoned-down R&B over the album's nine tracks. His reminders that a single artist is responsible are actually rather helpful.

Weirdly, the post-genre pastiche works. Derulo gets a strong songwriting assist from producer J.R. Rotem here -- one rarely waits more than a few seconds for something deliriously catchy to happen. He's a nimble vocalist who uses Auto-Tune the way T-Pain does -- as an accent to already sharp melodies like the churning "In My Head" or the fizzy disco-pop of "The Sky's the Limit." The Haitian American Derulo also knows exactly when to deploy his Caribbean lilt to ramp up a song's melodrama, and it's one of his best vocal tricks.

The veering eclecticism of the album suggests that he's still figuring out his sound though, and he won't have untilled Imogen Heap samples, like on the inescapable "Whatcha Say," to work off of forever. Nonetheless, it's a pleasure-packed debut, and Derulo's melismatic call sign should be pouring out of car windows for the duration of 2010.

*** by August Brown, Los Angeles Times ***