Best - Second Session - [Jacket B / CD+DVD] Customer Reviews

The songs overall are really good and the videos are too. The story within Candy feat. Mr. Blistah, you, feel, Lies and Someday is great! I hope everyone enjoys the CD part and also the DVD.

To think she'd release 12 singles in 12 consecutive weeks, have 5 of those singles take the #1 or 2 spot, and have every one of them make Oricon top 10. What an amazing feat that Kuu managed to pull off. I had my doubts but listening to this album changed all that. By listening to songs like You, D.D.D, Shake It Up, Wind, Feel, etc I could tell she put a lot of hard work into making this huge endeavor fly. Every song had a good quality about it that can only be fully understood after listening to them. The variety in the type of songs is one of the strengths of this album. It's well balanced with all of the styles Kuu does best. I highly recommend getting this with the DVD as it comes with the PV footage for each single.

Another great CD from Koda Kumi. The music videos are quite distinct. It's interesting how four of them are interconnected to make a longer story. A bonus feature is watching only those four back to back, so you get the whole story. As usual her songs are great and it's nice to hear another Disney rendition in English. A couple of songs have a distinct "pop" feel as opposed to her normal hip-hop influence. It's nice that there is a lot of variety in here. My personal favorite from this CD is Shake It Up.

Kumi Koda melds the beauty of traditional JPOP with the rhythm and harmony of Hip-Hop beats in Best. Her tracks with SOULHEAD and Mr. Blistah have the true sound of the new Hip-Hop girls, with Candy combining complex Arabian rhythms and rapping backtracks for a unique melange of soul. Shake It Up jumps to the other end with an anime sound and ethereal guitar riffs punctuated with Kumi's strong dance rhythm and harmonies. WIND is a fine JPOP track with a Basia-like feel to it, almost out of Kumi's Hip-Hop genre completely. The album concludes with a stunning duet with Peabo Bryson and full orchestra that truly reveals the breadth of Kumi's talent. All in all, one of Japan's best new contemporary artists showcased brilliantly.

The songs on Koda Kumi's Best -Second Session- are really good, spanning from heavy flavored rock tracks like "D.D.D.", smooth R&B gems such as "feel", racy dance tunes like "No Regret", and round back to sugary bubble-gum pop anthems like "Birthday Eve". This incredible flexibility and skill to adapt to different genres of music has kept Kumi in the spotlight for the past few years now. It's almost as if Koda Kumi produced children, because all of the 12 songs are great, each having its own sense of individuality and unique personality. The two new tracks are excellent as well, especially "Love goes like..." which is a increadibly catchy heart-pounding R&B song. I hightly recommend this album to everyone, trust me, you won't be disappointed.