Jennifer Lopez - Brave (2007)
Password: sharedmusic.net
ARTIST: Jennifer Lopez
TITLE: Brave
LABEL: Epic
GENRE: R&B
GRABBER: EAC (Secure Mode)
ENCODER: Lame 3.98b5 / -V2 --vbr-new
QUALITY: 207 Kbps Avg / 44.1 KHz / Joint Stereo
PLAYTIME: 0h 47min 54sec total
SIZE: 71.33MB
RELEASE DATE: 2007-10-09
RIP DATE: 2007-10-10
Track List
----------
01. Stay Together (Produced By Jonathan 3:30
"J.R." Rotem)
02. Forever (Produced By HIT-BOY & The 3:39
Clutch)
03. Hold It Don't Drop It (Produced By 3:55
Dirty Swift & Bruce Waynne)
04. Do It Well (Produced By Ryan "Alias" 3:05
Tedder)
05. Gotta Be There (Produced By The 3:57
Platinum Brothers & Travis "Supercat"
Cherry)
06. Never Gonna Give Up (Produced By Peter 4:21
Wade Keusch, Michellle Lynn Bell &
Julio Reyes)
07. Mile In These Shoes (Produced By 3:16
Warren "Oak" Felder)
08. The Way It Is (Produced By Peter Wade 3:07
Keusch & Michellle Lynn Bell)
09. Be Mine (Produced By Peter Wade 3:20
Keusch, Michellle Lynn Bell, Johnny
Rodeo & Chuck Brody)
10. I Need Love (Produced By Peter Wade 3:52
Keusch, Michellle Lynn Bell, Johnny
Rodeo & Chuck Brody)
11. Wrong When You're Gone (Produced By 3:58
Big D & The Clutch)
12. Brave (Produced By Bloodshy & Avant & 4:21
The Clutch)
13. Do It Well (Feat. Ludacris) (Bonus 3:33
Track) (Produced By Ryan "Alias"
Tedder)
Release Notes:
Brave follows Como Ama una Mujer, Jennifer Lopez's first Spanish-language album,
by a matter of seven months -- a quick follow-up by any measure, but perhaps one
that reflects the lack of buzz Como created. On paper, Brave should be the polar
opposite of its immediate predecessor -- it's in English where the other was in
Spanish, that album was moody and dramatic, this is light and peppy -- but
despite these superficial differences, the two albums have a number of
similarities, chief among them that they are the work of a woman settled and
happy in her marriage. Jennifer kicks off the album with "Stay Together," an
anthem of monogamy where she declares that heartbreak and dating are so passT,
that toughing it out is the new trend, and the rest of the record kind of plays
off that theme, as nights out on the town are traded for cozy nights at home.
While Lopez may have domesticity on her mind, Brave is still a dance album,
filled with bright beats and happy hooks, but this isn't music for clubbing,
it's dance music for home, maybe background music for some chores. As such, it
doesn't sound fresh -- there's nothing that reflects any current dance trends,
not even a passing nod at Justin Timberlake's neo-electro or crunk -- it sounds
stuck in 1999, when J-Lo released her first album, or perhaps even in 1989, when
she was a Fly Girl on In Living Color. It's the sound of a housewife looking
back and remembering when things were a bit more carefree -- it's nostalgia, but
tempered with happiness, since she's perfectly content with where she's at now.
So, Brave is comfortable, it doesn't try too hard, it doesn't have many
surprises, but it's cheerful and not without its charms, as it's a throwback
that's done without a hint of self-consciousness or irony. It's nothing more
than modest music for mellow good times, but it's lively enough to be fleeting
fun, with enough good tunes for a mild party, preferably one that's held at
home.
You know I just had to release this to prove a point. I find it kind of weird
that a new group out of no where can win the race to this album. They say "for
some private reasons we were unable to release photos of the covers/cd." Give me
a break. The top groups can provide scans. The mighty -RNS did. Why can't you
guys? You're telling me you don't have a camera phone, a scanner or something of
that type in this day of age? Pfft. Sounds like a lame excuse to me. And it
really only takes less than a minute to do it. I decided to do some comparisons.
My own rip vs. -FRAY vs. -JLOPEZ rip. Results are in lame397.jpg, as this
release is 3.98b5 so it really isn't comparable. Isn't it quite odd how the
-JLOPEZ release and our release comes out to almost the exact same size +/- a
few bytes even though -JLOPEZ was European sourced, and ours is American? My rip
is definately retail (I know because I bought it), and I can safely assume
-JLOPEZ is the retail version aswell, considering the fact that it's almost
identical to our rip. On the other hand, the -FRAY release is higher on almost
all tracks, with exception to track 08. I wonder what source their release was?
Possibly an unmastered advance? (Speaking of that, is there a reason to dupe
over that? Rules aren't clear on that...) A fake re-encode? I don't know.
Remember guys, higher bitrates does not necessarily mean higher quality. If
someone really wanted to, they could modify the loudness and normalization of a
CD, which would give it higher bitrates and the appearance of a legit rip. I
cannot say for sure if that occured here, that's outside of my technical
expertise, but it is possible to perform. Another thing that caught my eye about
the -FRAY release and most of their releases in general, is the fact that it's
missing ReplayGain tags (See replaygain.jpg and compare with our rip and the
-JLOPEZ rip). By default, LAME will add the tag after it is finished encoding
the track. To prevent LAME from doing this, you can specify the --noreplaygain
switch. I don't know why you would specify this switch, as it isn't well
documented and most people don't even know about it. BUT, foobar2000's encoder
GUI specifies this by default. Does -FRAY rip with foobar2000? I don't know, but
it seems like a funny choice for a ripper when most people use EAC. Who am I to
judge anyway, I believe foobar2000's ripper has secure mode too, so whatever. If
you didn't know, foobar also has a nifty format converter, which uses the same
config as it's CD Ripper (see norgtag.jpg. As you can see the --noreplaygain is
specified by default). Is it possible that -FRAY uses the format converter to
re-encode MP3s? Again, I don't know. But if you ask around, foobar is probably
the easiest GUI to use for format conversion/LAME GUI, which is probably why you
would use foobar to encode, not to rip CDs. (I'll laugh the peeps from -FRAY
happen to read this and deletes that switch =P) If -JLOPEZ is who I think it is
(I know they change grp names to -), they are a group with 2+ years
in the game, over 3000 releases, a nuke ratio of under 3% with many big name
releases, so we know their releases are the real deal. -FRAY on the other hand
comes out of no where, gets a release atleast 3 days ahead of retail, no scans
and already has some re-encodes on their resume? Really doubtin' it. I think
-FRAY could do a lot better if they cleaned their act up. No offense, but I
think groups like them show how crappy the scene is and how easy it is to get
pre access. Seems like it's politics in The Scene as well, favoritism above all,
which really does suck. The reason for all this big rant? I see on many predb's
that -JLOPEZ is nuked as a dupe, while -FRAY is ok. Nuke status should be the
other way around if you ask me. Why don't you read what -JLOPEZ has to say in
the scan they provided ;p. We care about the MP3 Scene, so just putting this out
to inform people about the technical aspects of MP3 encoding.
Note for -FRAY: Your MV rips are incorrect. You need to use replacement audio.
I know there was a point in time where our group was looked down for
re-encoding, I will never forget it. It is partly my fault for not checking the
backgrounds of my members and requiring scans on all releases. But almost a year
later, I believe that we have cleaned our act up, keeping only trustworthy
people, always providing scans and putting quality above all. Our record shows
it; we haven't been nuked in months now. I really didn't want to add to the
overall downward trend that's going on in the scene. For a moment, we did. When
I noticed some of my members were faking what they really had, I took immediate
action and implemented stricter rules in my group to ensure we wouldn't become
"another lame re-encode group." IMO, these changes have worked and has brought
some respect to our name (or so I think 
.) We hope to continue to bring the
scene more quality releases for many years to come!
ANYWAY after my giant blog up there, let's get to the release details. Another
quality internal from us with 600dpi scans included, since the other group is
unwilling to provide them for whatever reason...(scared of getting traced guys?
;p We have no problem providing scans, security is another big issue here, so
I'm not scared to provide them; we are stealthed).
Don't forget to support the artists! We did.
Group News
----------
We're looking for:
-Rippers With Unreleased Music, New Promo or Pre-Retails.
-Peeps with albums 2003 and older for Internal VBR ripping and archiving.
-Secure EU/AS HQs.
If you have any of the above, find us.
Greets to all the groups who put out quality releases, our sites for hosting
us and people who have helped along the way.
