The end of the 20th century was marked by various events in Namie Amuro's personal life which led her to step away from the spotlight for some time: her marriage to TRF member Sam Maruyama in 1997, the birth of her son Haruto in 1998, and the senseless murder of her mother in 1999. This meant that, by the time the year 2000 came around, it was time for Namie to step back into the limelight with the release of her 4th studio album GENIUS 2000, her first original album since 1997's Concentration 20. A brand-new century and millennium meant new experiences and challenges for Amuro. Up until this point, she had almost exclusively worked with serial hitmaker Tetsuya Komuro, something which had proved to be highly successful for her with 7 #1 hits already under her belt just from her first two solo albums + the 1998 compilation 181920 alone. However, things would be different with GENIUS 2000, with Namie enlisting the help of American record producer Dallas Austin, best known for his work with TLC. The inclusion of an overseas producer is very evidenced in the more Western sound that GENIUS 2000 tends to go for while still maintaining bits and pieces of the classic J-pop sound that had made Namie popular up until now. This combination of genres and ideas that GENIUS 2000 brings to the table seem interesting on paper, but ultimately leave something to be desired in terms of execution.
The album starts off with the instrumental intro "Make the Connection Complete," which plays into the theme of the beginning of a new era with futuristic, electronic sounds and a robot voice which spells out the title of the song. It's not much, but it flows nicely into the first full-length track "LOVE 2000." This song also follows the same futuristic theme of the intro track, and it does it fabulously. The soundscape of this song is like nothing else in Namie's discography prior to this release and even after. It's interesting, it's new, it's vigorous. It does an excellent job in capturing the sense of anticipation mixed with anxiousness which came with the beginning of the 21st century. I will say, these two tracks make the album seem more conceptual than it actually is. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I wouldn't really say these 2 songs are effective indicators of what is to come, especially not when the next track on the album is a gospel inspired pop song complete with a choir and everything. "RESPECT the POWER OF LOVE" is a very important song when looking at Namie's career history, since the day it was released as a single was also the day that her mother's life was tragically and brutally taken away. The mix featured on the album is much more chill and laidback than the mix featured on the single, without taking away the hopeful and optimistic feeling that one gets from listening to it. However, while the single mix feels more celebratory, the album version of "RESPECT the POWER OF LOVE" does give the vibe of finding happiness and closure in love after a negative event in one's life, which I think makes the song all the more special. After all, love is what makes the world go round. Love can bring us up from the deepest pits of hell, but we have to learn to respect it and allow it into our lives; otherwise, it won't do us any good.
One thing about GENIUS 2000 I have a bit of an issue with is how top-heavy it is. All of the 4 singles and most of the hard-hitting album tracks reside in the first half of the album, which can make the latter half a bit of a drag to get through. I think this has more to do with the sequencing of the album rather than the quality of the songs itself; in fact, this album has some really great songs. Namely, "I HAVE NEVER SEEN" has to be easily one of my favorite Namie songs of all-time and "SOMETHING 'BOUT THE KISS" serves as a great introduction to a more hip-hop influenced style of music that Namie would further touch upon in later albums. "MI CORAZON (TE' AMOUR)" is a unique song in Namie's discography, as it is one of the few times Namie has dipped her toes into the Latin pop lake, and it really does do a great job! Makes me wonder why Namie didn't really revisit that style her music in her later albums. However, at the same time that the album has really great songs, it also has really "meh" songs. "GIVE IT A TRY" is the one song from this album I can't seem to fully get into, and while other songs such as "YOU ARE THE ONE" and "ASKING WHY" have grown on me with each listen of this album, they still very much feel like filler tracks. They're not terrible songs, but they could've stayed as B-sides on their respective singles. "YOU ARE THE ONE" specifically features American boy group IMAJIN, which I had never heard of until I listened to this album. They sound fine in their own right but combined with Namie's vocals (which aren't amazing) it may be a little jarring for people listening to this song for the first time, especially when you reach that final chorus. If they had to include these songs, I don't understand why they couldn't arrange them in a way that wouldn't put all the less-spectacular songs in the same place. It also doesn't help that a lot of these songs happen to be on the longer side, with the longest, "THINGS I COLLECTED," clocking in at 6 minutes and 18 seconds. It's actually a pretty decent song, but it definitely could've benefited from being half as long. (Fun fact! This song was actually later covered by Canadian singer Tamia in 2005 for the soundtrack of the movie Diary of a Mad Black Woman.) The album finally comes to a close with the outro track "LOG OFF," which circles back to the futuristic vibe of the first track, whilst with a more whimsical approach to it, as if signaling a sense of optimism for things to come in the following century.
GENIUS 2000 feels like a time capsule of sorts. It serves almost as a reminder of the optimism, hopes and dreams the World had for the 21st century during the brief period of time between the beginning of the century and the September 11 attacks in 2001. I know to some it might seem left field that I'm mentioning 9/11 yet again in an album review, but I genuinely do believe that the events of that day created a shift in the mentality of people not just in America, but around the World; which is why when looking back at things like GENIUS 2000, relics of a time in which people were not aware of all the issues which would plague our current era, one can't help but feel a sense of nostalgia (regardless of whether or not one was even alive to witness the turn of the millennium) and longing for a time in which all society associated the 21st century with was all the possibilities and advancements that we would make as a society. Even if GENIUS 2000 didn't fully lean into it, the new sounds and imagery that Namie introduced for herself in this album mixed with her already well-known 90s styles feel symbolic to this weird transitional period in human history, and even with all of the things the album could've done better, it still does make me feel like I'm being transported to the year 2000 and makes me feel nostalgic for a time that happened four whole years before I was even born.
GENIUS 2000 has a great idea at its core; whether or not it was executed as best as it could've been, I'm not sure of. That being said, it's still an enjoyable album, not to mention a symbol of an important turning point in Namie's career. It's unfortunate, because this album isn't as memorable as it could've been had there been some different approaches to the track listing, including the selection of songs and the way they're sequenced. Because of this, I don't think people realize just how significant this album is in regard to Namie's evolution as an artist, because despite the fact that the essence of 90s Namie remains in it on songs like "I HAVE NEVER SEEN" and "RESPECT the POWER OF LOVE", you can definitely hear (and see) 2000s Namie begin to sprout from this album onwards, especially on tracks such as "SOMETHING 'BOUT THE KISS" and "LEAVIN' for LAS VEGAS." In a sense, I consider this and break the rules to be sister albums. Not merely for the fact they were released the same year, but mainly because I feel like break the rules feels like a slightly more refined version of GENIUS 2000. Regardless, GENIUS 2000 is worth listening to, and more than that, it's worth appreciating. It gives you a sense of how far Namie had come as an artist up until her retirement, something she could've done around this time rather than 18 years later. Because of this, GENIUS 2000 feels like a triumph over all the chaos that took over Namie's personal life in the late 90s, and just like how this album motivated her to keep singing, there is a feeling of positivity and happiness that this album brings to me despite all of its flaws that motivates me to pursue my own dreams in life and reminds me to approach even the darkest moments with a smile.
