Not to be excluded is “If We Make Love Tonight,” on which a pondering Adina questions the possibilities of she and her best friend - who happens to be a guy - crossing the line to become romantically involved.ĭo You Wanna Ride? can be considered a solid debut. The album’s second single, “My Up and Down,” featured a mid-tempo melody underneath its risqu é message, and found a perplexed Howard wondering why this man - who said “you were happy / With your wife and happy home” - would have the “time to hang around / For my up and down.” #Truth. This is especially true on the title track, “Do You Wanna Ride?” Sounding as though it were penned by then-fellow newcomer Montell Jordan, “Ride” encapsulates mid-’90s phone play with body roll-worthy smoothness, with “freaky,” “bump ‘n’ grind” and “do me” dropped throughout the track for sex-jam authenticity. Not to be left out of the ballad collection on the disc was “Horny for Your Love,” which, like many other tracks on Do You Wanna Ride? seems to stretch the interchangeability of love and arousal.īut those slow jams paved the way for Adina to cruise smoothly into her other niche: lust-filled balladry.
The dance floor-readiness of “Freak Like Me” and “You Got Me Humpin’” gave listeners a chance to forgive Adina’s artistic merits thanks to having hot beats, but they would be challenged with a cover of Ren é & Angela ’s “You Don’t Have to Cry,” in which Adina teamed with Michael Speaks for perhaps the most over-the-top rendition in the song’s nearly 30-year existence. A near-continuation of “Freak Like Me,” the Michigan native adopted G-funk bass and additional percussion to croon not-so-subtle missives to her man of the moment over a thick melody as street as the guest rap’s lyrics (“Fly little honey with that West Coast flava / She told me to leave a 6-9 when I paged her”). No doubt the public found it difficult to accept her as a serious artist due in part to the racy album cover Do You Wanna Ride? donned and the album-leading song, “You Got Me Humpin’,” which she co-wrote. But Adina drew a particular ire and praise in a tomāto-tomäto conflict between feminists who took issue with her lyrical content and those who claimed her approach was feminist because it preached confidence and control.īut no matter which side of the argument listeners took, collectively, it seemed, they interpreted her act as a gimmick. , both of which found lady singers pushing sexual boundaries within the mainstream.
True, SWV and Changing Faces dipped into suggestivism with “Downtown” and “Stroke You Up,” respectively and Adina’s full-length debut, Do You Wanna Ride?, existed in an era post- Madonna ’s Erotica and Janet Jackson ’s janet.
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