File this under the "Who the hell asked you to?" folder. The-Dream opted to take on the alt R&B favorite "One In A Million" by the late Aaliyah for his upcoming mixtape "Love Sessions." The spare, space age production was originally provided by Timbaland when he was at his most experimental, throwing in the sounds of crickets chirping over drums and vinyl scratching. Paired with Aaliyah's breathy, inviting voice and Missy Elliot's songwriting, the trio helped reshape the sound of R&B music in the 90s with "One In A Million" and other hits.
The-Dream, part of the hit-making duo with Christopher "Tricky" Stewart, is no slouch in the music production department himself having helped produce Rihanna's "Umbrella" and Beyonce's "Single Ladies." And while The-Dream, real name Terius Nash, has found some success as an artist in his own right, he is quite limited in his vocal capabilities. At his best, The-Dream is not an emotive, warm, intimate singer. He flourishes rather as a cool, distant, braggadocio, like on "Rockin' That Thing," an over-the-top, sexualized R-Kelly-like Romeo in "Falsetto," or a vitriol-spitting, "you-did-me-wrong" vengeful boyfriend on "Nikki." Instead of playing to these strengths, Terius instead tries, and fails, to match the warmth and intimacy that Aaliyah set in her version of "One In A Million." Check out the cover yourself below.
The biggest mistake The-Dream made here was in not switching the cover up more to make it sound like a The-Dream song. By sticking with the original beat and only slightly varying the melody in places, he left himself wide open to direct comparisons of the original instead of flipping the song in an unexpected way. Even stranger than The-Dream's choice of a cover song was an official Aaliyah Twitter account retweeting the cover. They have Twitter in the afterlife now? Creepy.
Jason DeRulo also decided to play the cover game, taking on Kanye West's "Heartless" for Billboard.com's Mashup Mondays. The pop singer, decked out in fingerless leather gloves and an over abundance of metal jewelry, claims that the song holds special meaning to him since it was a song that grew popular while he was on the verge of a break-up.
So in order to convey his "connection" to the song, Jason DeRulo spends 4 minutes straining, squealing and shutting his eyes so tight that you might think he was having a difficult bowel movement. Can you feel his pain? Everything about his performance was just trying way too hard. Kris Allen did a much better, more effortless pop cover of "Heartless" than Jason ever could, but check DeRulo's take out below anyway.
