''Music Is My Savior'' is the debut studio album by American rapper Mims. It was released on March 27, 2007, via

Capitol Records Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007), and simply known as Capitol, is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-base ...

. Recording sessions took place at BlackOut Studios in

Miami Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...

, 2wizlin' Studios in

Pasadena Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial d ...

, SoundisGeto Studios in

Independence Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state, in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the status of ...

, and Studio Atlantis. Production was handled by the Blackout Movement members Winston Thomas,

Danny Schofield Daniel James Schofield (born 10 April 1980) is an English former footballer and manager who is an assistant coach at Central Coast Mariners. Playing career Huddersfield Town Schofield was signed by Huddersfield Town from Brodsworth Welfare fo ...

and Thomas Simons, D. Baker, Twizz, Kobayashi, the Vault Productions and

Ty Fyffe Tyrone Gregory Fyffe (born June 4, 1971), also known as Sugarless, is an American record producer from Queens, New York City. During his career he produced tracks for MC Lyte, Foxy Brown, Slick Rick, Ja Rule, Canibus, Jayo Felony, Queen Pen, ...

. It features

guest appearance The term guest appearance generally denotes the appearance of a guest in an artistic or pop-culture setting. The guests themselves (referred to as guest artists, featured artists, guest stars, or guest fighters, depending on context), are disting ...

s from

Bun B Bernard James Freeman (born March 19, 1973), known professionally as Bun B, is an American rapper. He is best known as one half of the Southern rap duo UGK (Underground Kingz), a group he formed in 1987 alongside Pimp C. Aside from his work wi ...

J. Holiday Nahum Thorton Grymes (born November 29, 1984), better known by his stage name J. Holiday, is an American R&B singer and rapper. He is best known for his 2007 single " Bed", which peaked at number five on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100. It preced ...

LeToya Luckett LeToya Luckett-Coles (born March 11, 1981) is an American R&B singer and actress. She rose to fame in the late 1990s as a founding member of the R&B girl group Destiny's Child, one of the world's best-selling girl groups of all time. As a mem ...

, Purple Popcorn, the Bad Seed,

Baby Cham In common terminology, a baby is the very young offspring of adult human beings, while infant (from the Latin word ''infans'', meaning 'baby' or 'child') is a formal or specialised synonym. The terms may also be used to refer to juveniles of ...

and

Junior Reid Delroy "Junior" Reid (born 6 June 1963) is a Jamaican reggae and dancehall deejay. From 1986 to 1988, he served as lead vocalist for the reggae band Black Uhuru on three albums: '' Brutal'' (1986), '' Positive'' (1987), and ''Black Uhuru Live i ...

. In the United States, the album debuted at number 4 on the ''Billboard'' 200, number 2 on both the

Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums is a music chart published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine that ranks R&B and hip-hop albums based on sales in the United States and is compiled by Luminate. The chart debuted as Hot R&B LPs in the issue dated January 30, ...

and

Top Rap Albums Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums is a music chart published weekly by ''Billboard'' magazine that ranks R&B and hip-hop albums based on sales in the United States and is compiled by Luminate. The chart debuted as Hot R&B LPs in the issue dated January 30, ...

and number 7 on the

Tastemaker Albums The ''Billboard'' charts tabulate the relative weekly popularity of songs and albums in the United States and elsewhere. The results are published in ''Billboard'' magazine. ''Billboard'' biz, the online extension of the ''Billboard'' charts, p ...

charts, selling 78,000 copies sold in the first week. It also made it to number 109 on the

French Albums Chart SNEP (, in English National Syndicate of Phonographic Publishing) is the inter-professional organisation that protects the interests of the French record industry. Originally known under the acronym SNICOP, the organisation was established in 1 ...

and number 14 on the UK Hip Hop and R&B Albums Chart. Its

lead single A lead single (or first single) is the first single to be released from a studio album by an artist or a band, usually before the album itself is released and also occasionally on the same day of the album's release date. A similar term, "debut ...

, " This Is Why I'm Hot", reached the number-one spot on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, number 14 on the

Official Finnish Charts The Official Finnish Charts (; ) are national record charts in Finland compiled and published by Musiikkituottajat – IFPI Finland. The name ''Suomen virallinen lista/Finlands officiella lista'' (lit. "the Official Finnish Chart"), which is ...

, number 18 on the UK singles chart, number 19 on the

Canadian Hot 100 The Canadian Hot 100 is a music industry record chart in Canada for songs, published weekly by ''Billboard (magazine), Billboard'' magazine. It was launched on the issue dated March 31, 2007 as the standard record chart in Canada; a new chart ...

, top 40 in New Zealand, Australia and Sweden, and top 75 in France, Germany and Switzerland. The

Recording Industry Association of America The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/o ...

certified the song

Platinum Platinum is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a density, dense, malleable, ductility, ductile, highly unreactive, precious metal, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name origina ...

on March 22, 2007 for the sales of 1,000,000 copies and double Platinum on October 2, 2012 for the digital sales of 2,000,000 units in the US alone. The album's second single, " Like This", made it to number 32 on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100 and number 82 on the UK singles charts, and received Gold certification by the RIAA on October 2, 2012. The song "Cop It" was featured in the

EA Sports EA Sports is a division of Electronic Arts that develops and publishes sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they imitated real-life sports networks by calling themselves the "EA Sports Network" (EASN) ...

game ''

Madden 08 ''Madden NFL 08'' is a 2007 American football video game based on the National Football League that was published by EA Sports and developed by EA Tiburon. It is the 19th installment in the '' Madden NFL'' video game franchise. It features Ten ...

''. A snippet of the song "Superman" was used in

Britain's Got Talent ''Britain's Got Talent'' (often abbreviated to ''BGT'') is a televised British talent show competition, and part of the global '' Got Talent'' franchise created by Simon Cowell. Presented by Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly (colloquial ...

2009 winners

Diversity Diversity, diversify, or diverse may refer to: Business *Diversity (business), the inclusion of people of different identities (ethnicity, gender, age) in the workforce *Diversity marketing, marketing communication targeting diverse customers * ...

's routine.

Critical reception

''Music Is My Savior'' was met with generally favorable reviews from

music critics Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on ...

. At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a

normalized Normalization or normalisation refers to a process that makes something more normal or regular. Science * Normalization process theory, a sociological theory of the implementation of new technologies or innovations * Normalization model, used in ...

rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an

average In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...

score of 64 based on eight reviews. In her album review for

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

, Marisa Brown praised the artist, saying: "he can focus on the serious, the sentimental, or the fun side of life when he needs to, but he does it all without seeming like he's forcing out a persona". Simon Vozick-Levinson of ''

Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American online magazine, digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, ...

'' stated: "the disc contains more than a few moments where Mims' quick, confident style recalls

Jay-Z Shawn Corey Carter (born December 4, 1969), known professionally as Jay-Z, is an American Rapping, rapper, businessman, and record executive. Rooted in East Coast hip-hop, he was named Billboard and Vibe's 50 Greatest Rappers of All Time, the ...

's mid-'90s blinged-out phase". Steve 'Flash' Juon of RapReviews wrote: "these may be simple tales, but Mims' flow is a smooth

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

flow clearly influenced by the likes of New York greats like Jay-Z while still vocally unique enough to entice a listener to pay attention". Ken Capobianco of ''

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe,'' also known locally as ''the Globe'', is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Boston Globe'' is the oldest and largest daily new ...

'' called the album a "fluid, likable disc". In mixed reviews,

Christian Hoard Christian David Hoard is an American music journalist and music editor for ''Rolling Stone''. A 2000 graduate of the University of Michigan, he began his career as a music journalist writing for the ''Michigan Daily''. He later moved to New York Ci ...

of ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. The magazine was first known fo ...

'' stated: "Mims can't carry a whole album, and ''Savior'' is long on quasi-Southern junk rhymes about Mims' general excellence and panty-melting suaveness". Alex Macpherson of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' found the album "generic, yes, but that is no cause for complaint when the genre is so good". Chris Yuscavage of ''

Vibe Vibe, alternatively '' vibes,'' is short for ''vibration''. A "vibe" is an emotional reaction to the aura or energy felt to belong to a person, place or thing. Vibe may also refer to: People * DJ Vibe (born 1968), Portuguese DJ * Lasse Vibe (b ...

'' called it "a tepid debut". Serena Kim of ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'' concluded: "peel away the accessibility of his fluffy debut and there's nothing but major-label album fodder".

Track listing

;Sample credits *Track 2 contains elements of "It's All Right" by

Ray Charles Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004) was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. He is regarded as one of the most iconic and influential musicians in history, and was often referred to by contemporaries as "The Gen ...

. *Track 3 contains interpolations from the composition "I Wanna Do Something Freaky To You". Written by

Leon Haywood Otha Leon Haywood (February 11, 1942 – April 5, 2016) was an American funk and soul singer, songwriter, and record producer. He is best known for his 1975 hit single "I Want'a Do Something Freaky to You", which has been frequently sampled by ...

. *Track 5 contains samples from the composition "Eternal Love" written by Jay Asher and Paul Jabara as performed by

Stephanie Mills Stephanie Dorthea Mills (born March 22, 1957) is an American singer, songwriter and actress. She rose to stardom as Dorothy Gale in the original seven-time Tony Awards, Tony Award winning Broadway theatre, Broadway run of the musical ''The Wiz'' ...

. *Track 13 contains a sample of the composition "

You Don't Love Me (No, No, No) "You Don't Love Me (No, No, No)" is a song by Jamaican singer Dawn Penn, released in February 1994 by Big Beat as the first single from her first studio album, '' No, No, No'' (1994). The song's lyrics are credited to Penn, Bo Diddley and Wil ...

" performed by

Dawn Penn Dawn Penn (born 11 January 1952) is a Jamaican reggae singer. She first had a short career during the rocksteady era from 1967 to 1969, but she is most known for her single " You Don't Love Me (No, No, No)", which became a worldwide hit in 1994. ...

and samples from "Stalag 17" written by

Winston Riley Winston Riley (14 May 1943 – 19 January 2012) was a Jamaican singer, songwriter and record producer. The ''Jamaica Gleaner'' notes he was one of the most successful reggae producers.

. *Track 14 contains material sampled from " Moonchild" performed by

King Crimson King Crimson were an English progressive rock band formed in London in 1968 by Robert Fripp, Michael Giles, Greg Lake, Ian McDonald (musician), Ian McDonald and Peter Sinfield. Guitarist Fripp remained the only constant member throughout the ...

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

References

External links

* {{Authority control 2007 debut albums Mims (rapper) albums Capitol Records albums Albums produced by Ty Fyffe