Fantasia Barrino's first album,
Free Yourself, wasn't exactly a flop but it wasn't a hit, either. It debuted in the Top Ten and had four singles in the Billboard R&B charts, which is far from a disaster but it was a disappointment by American Idol standards, particularly for a vocalist who was considered by many viewers, as well as judge
Simon Cowell, the most talented singer to yet appear on the show. Talented
Fantasia certainly was, but talent can be hard to sell, and
Fantasia's problem boiled down to this: she had enough raw vocal power to draw comparisons to such classic soul divas as
Aretha Franklin, which is what appealed to the legions of middle-America fans of the show, but that's not a style that has much to do with contemporary R&B, so she was given a modern makeover on
Free Yourself. It was a cautious one, though, leaving remnants of her Idol persona -- most evident on a reprise of her show-stopping interpretation of
Gershwin's "Summertime" -- surrounded by hip-hop-inflected urban soul like the single "Baby Mama," which was precisely the kind of thing that made fans of "Summertime" recoil. And recoil they did. They wound up avoiding the album, and "Baby Mama" didn't win enough converts to make up for the Idol audience's absence, so
Fantasia and company took the only logical step for her eponymous sophomore album: they made it strictly R&B.