Lisa G. Allen Drops “Big Momma”

Club music doesn’t have to be singular in style or compositional structure, and if there’s one thing that Lisa G. Allen seems out to accomplish with her new single “Big Momma,” it’s proving this very fact. “Big Momma” uses a very simple concept to back up what feels like one of the more charming lead vocals I’ve heard in a pop single out of the underground lately, and while it has the ability to get you grooving right out of the box, it lacks the one-note feel that a lot of club tracks tend to sport, whether intentionally or not. 

The groove is everything in this performance, and it’s made much stronger through the delivery that Allen is offering us from behind the mic. She’s got one heck of a commanding presence, but she isn’t overdoing it here; honestly, I think she could have gone a little heavier on the hook and still sounded relatively efficient with what she’s trying to construct. She has a fair producer in Ronnue giving her some assistance with the compositional ballad of this single, but there’s never any debating whether or not she can stand on her own two feet in this track. 

This lead vocal never has to fight for room in the arrangement, but instead occupies the center spotlight with a breathable backdrop. The instrumentation in “Big Momma” is rather understated in comparison to what a lot of mainstream players probably would have gone with, but at this moment in her career, I don’t think that Lisa G. Allen needs to be particularly ambitious in the booth. She’s putting down an artistic foundation with this release, and arguably setting a standard that’s going to be hard for her to surpass in the future without continuously evolving (much like her peers on both sides of the dial). 

There’s a swing here that isn’t nearly as prominent in the song as I’d expect, but this too feels like a safe move on the part of Allen. She’s got a voice that can run laps around a lot of the competition, especially on the faltering west coast circuit we’ve been hearing so much out of in the past two years, but she doesn’t want to give us the whole nine yards with this release; there’s a mystique she still wishes to cultivate, and it’s going to draw at least one critic – me – to see her live in the future. 

I didn’t know anything about Lisa G. Allen outside of her last collaboration with Ronnue in his single “Dance Tonight,” but I like what she’s doing here on her own with a voice that doesn’t need a lot of grooming to sound like a million bucks. “Big Momma” is a statement of self, make no mistakes about it, but it’s also teasing us with possibilities that I want this singer to undertake if she’s going to continue with her solo odyssey. Her vocal has to remain the primary focus in her music, as it is in this song, as it’s just too provocative to go underutilized. 

Michael Rand