Flo Rida mines the familiar in 'Mail on Sunday'

Flo Rida mines the familiar in 'Mail on Sunday'

rapper Flo Rida has repeatedly articulated that his chief artistic goal is to approach things from the "left side," even tattooing his left biceps with a massive picture of Jimi Hendrix to honor the late lefty guitarist's iconoclasm. But rather than plumb uncharted creative terrain, "Mail on Sunday," Flo Rida's Atlantic Records debut, seems obsessed with familiarity.
Nearly every song has big-name help, with guest appearances from Lil Wayne, will.I.am, Sean Kingston, T-Pain and Rick Ross, displaying Atlantic's high commercial hopes for the Miami MC, whose "Low" has had a virtual stranglehold atop the singles charts since emerging last fall. Sonically, an all-star team of Jazze Pha, the Runners, J.R. Rotem and Timbaland contributes beats that strive for a dizzied futurism but feel suspiciously boilerplate in their bombastic, synth-heavy, would-be club bangers.
As for Flo Rida, he's capable and occasionally good, blessed with a nimble husky flow that wanders somewhere between Nelly and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Yet other than the album's highlight, the resonant break-up song "Still Missin'," "Mail on Sunday" rarely delivers, instead hawking the emergence of yet another major-label rapper with billion-dollar beats and an obsession with money, Patrón, the club and, of course, girls in "apple bottom jeans and boots with the fur."