| JHUD | |
| Type: | Studio |
| Artist: | Jennifer Hudson |
| Cover: | Jennifer Hudson JHUD.jpg |
| Label: | RCA |
| Prev Title: | I Remember Me |
| Prev Year: | 2011 |
| Next Title: | Respect |
| Next Year: | 2021 |
JHUD is the third studio album by American singer and actress Jennifer Hudson. It was released on September 23, 2014, by RCA Records as the follow-up to I Remember Me (2011).[1] The album marks Hudson's first and only release through RCA following the closure of Arista and J Records.
The 1970s-inspired album has already spawned the Pharrell-produced single "I Can't Describe (The Way I Feel)" featuring T.I. and the Timbaland-produced "Walk It Out", for which she shot the music video in Chicago. On August 18, 2014, Hudson released the single, "Dangerous", via her Vevo and SoundCloud accounts. The single "It's Your World" featuring R. Kelly was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance.[2] In 2019, as a reaction to the documentary Surviving R. Kelly, Kelly's featured song, "It's Your World", was removed from all digital editions of the album. However, it was later returned.
The single "I Still Love You" was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award for Best Video with a Message[3] and the album was named the "Best R&B/Soul Album" by iTunes.[4]
In March 2011, Hudson released her second album I Remember Me. As with her self-titled début, Hudson worked with many different producers and songwriters on the project, resulting in a "feel good album".[5] Upon release, it debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of 165,000 copies,[6] and was eventually certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for shipping over 500,000 copies in the United States.[7] While not as successful as previous releases, lead single "Where You At" became a top-ten hit on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, though subsequent singles failed to chart or sell noticeably.[8] After a short musical hiatus, in which she co-starred in the films The Three Stooges (2012), The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete (2013), and Black Nativity (2013), Hudson returned to music recording in mid-2013.[9] Heading for a different direction, Hudson consulted new producers to work with her on her third album: "It's different expressions of me as an artist, a girl, a music lover. Earlier in my career I was just a soloist singing other people's songs. Now I really want to be an artist. I want to lift the people up, have fun, create a moment. I have my own visions that I want to bring to life."[10] On the developing process of her third album, she elaborated in November 2013: "I've been working with Pharrell Williams quite a bit on my album, and Timbaland as well. This whole project this time around is extremely different and every session felt like a party, like we was getting our jam on."[9]
JHUD received generally favorable reviews from music critics. On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 68, based on six reviews. Billboard editor Elias Leight remarked that "the spare templates [Hudson] uses here, which are heavy on rhythm and relatively empty otherwise, give her plenty of space to flex her powerful voice." Writing for AllMusic, Andy Kellman forecasting Hudson to be "in full-on diva mode" even though she "occasionally sounds disconnected from the material, but the singer, as powerful as ever, still leaves her indelible mark on everything". Rolling Stones Christopher R. Weingarten found "the modern R&B-as-disco-as-house thing is very well-trod territory, but only Hudson has the range to recall the brassy melismata of Thelma Houston, the siren wail of Gloria Gaynor and the spirals of CeCe Peniston on one LP."
Theo Leanse, writing for The Guardian, felt that while "there are highs [and] lows [and] there's always a gooey pleasure to hearing her sing, but you'd hope someone launched through gospel to the American Idol finals and an Oscar win might find better material in an R&B world thundering with great songwriters." Slant Magazine's Andrew Chan wrote that "at seven minutes, this contemplative gospel epic is not without flaws: Hudson continues to struggle when singing lighter and lower, and the melody meanders without really making an impression. But in the way it elegantly defines music as a means of confronting and transcending the incomprehensible, it should serve as a heartrending manifesto for soul singers everywhere." New York Daily News editor Jim Farber found that much of JHUDs "material sounds like it was fished out of the slush pile of hotter stars like Beyoncé or Nicki Minaj." He noted that Hudson "finally shakes awake toward the end" of the album.
JHUD debuted at number 10 on the US Billboard 200 albums chart, selling 24,000 copies in its first week of release. It marked Hudson's lowest sales and chart debut for a studio set and was a considerable decline from her previous effort I Remember Me, which had opened to sales of 165,000 copies in 2011.[11] JHUD debuted at number two on the Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart, becoming her third consecutive album to do so. Commenting on the album's chart performance, Paul Grein from Yahoo! Music felt that its opening sales were "a disappointment, considering that her first two albums, [..] both debuted at number two." He found that "the main problem is that the singles from this album haven't done as well as the singles from Hudson's previous albums [...] None of the first three singles from the new album has cracked the top 20 on the R&B chart."[11] By December 2014, JHUD had sold 61,000 copies in the US.[12]
Notes
Credits adapted from the liner notes of JHUD.[13]
Performers and musicians
Production
Design and management
| Peak position | |
| Japanese Albums (Oricon)[14] | 170 |
|---|---|
| South Korean International Albums (Circle)[15] | 59 |
| Position | ||
| US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums (Billboard)[16] | 58 |
|---|
