Have you ever felt betrayed by the first single or opening track to an album? That’s how I felt with the Toddla T’s “Watch Me Dance.”” Granted, I wasn’t familiar with the Sheffield artist and hadn’t listened to his 2009 album Skanky Skanky, so I didn’t know what to expect. That said, I still feel the gap between the first single and the rest of the album betrayed me as a listener and potential fan.

Watch Me Dance opens with the title track, a funky party jam featuring Roots Manuva that’s reminiscent of Morris Day and the Time. Now, I’m a HUGE fan of the Time. It’s not officially a party until I hear “Jungle Love.” I was very excited about the good time funk and energy that I thought I’d get from the rest of the album. Unfortunately, nothing else on the album comes even close to this track. Granted, there are a few other decent songs, but nothing touches the energy and excitement of “Watch Me Dance,” enough that I’m upset that the rest of the album bears the name of this song. The only song that comes close is “Cherry Picking,” which manages to find the midpoint between early ‘90s Annie Lennox and British hip hop of the early 2000s. The majority of the album attempts to channel Jamaican dancehall to varying degrees of success. “Streets So Warm,”” featuring Wayne Marshall and Skream is a decent song dealing with political corruption. However, this is the exception and not the rule. “Badman Flu” is cheesy in production and lyrical content, which can also be said about “Body Good,” “How Beautiful It Would Be,” “Lovely Girl,” and “Fly.”

Basically, we’re looking at a pretty low success rate, where two of the best singles sound like they don’t belong on the same album. I don’t know what Toddla T set out to accomplish with Watch Me Dance, but the result is a mess.