LET FREEDOM REIGN - Chrisette Michele

Liner Note Author: Chrisette Michele.Recording information: KMA Studios, New York, NY; The Cutting Room, NYC; Vanilla Sky Studios, North Hollywood, CA; Westlake Recording Studios, Los Angeles, CA.Photographer: Miranda Penn Turin.Let Freedom Reign is not quite as grandiose or as radical a shift for Chrisette Michele as its wrapping indicates. Chrisette packs the outside and inside of her third album with colorful, glamorous carnival scenes and inserts the title of each song into a lengthy essay. Apart from its charged mini-epic title song, featuring a marching band-like drive and verses from Talib Kweli and Black Thought, the album largely concerns affairs of the heart with a side of introspection and self-empowerment. Chrisette is back to co-writing almost all of her songs, while the whole set is produced by Chuck Harmony, who had a hand in almost every track on 2009's Epiphany. It's the most energetic of Chrisette's three albums, propelled by the uplifting "I'm a Star" and "Number One