What a lot of mainstream R&B singers lack in talent they more than make up for in gumption. Let's take Jeremih, for example. He of "Birthday Sex" and "Down On Me" "fame" took it upon himself to cover an Adele song for Billboard's running Mashup Mondays series. Unlike everybody and their grandmother's second cousin twice removed on their father's uncle's side who've already remade "Rolling In the Deep," Jeremih decided to touch "Rumour Has It" instead. That's not even a good idea on paper, and I pressed play on the video with much trepidation expecting a train wreck from the first note. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised in the beginning; Jeremih had a slight Frankie Lymon thing going on that worked for him. But by the chorus, the train derailed. The limitations of Jeremih's flimsy voice became glaringly obvious without the aid of Auto-Tune or other studio trickery. Also thrown into the mashup was a bit of Queen's "Under Pressure" and Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby." Can you say doing too much yet not enough? The first thing I did after listening to this entire performance and the brief interview that followed was to cleanse my palate with Adele's original. Marvin and Tammi said it best: ain't nothing like the real thing, baby.
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