Follow Your Heart

Cubic Zirconia is a, well, I guess they’re dance music, for lack of hyphenates, led by the criminally unknown singer Tiombe Lockhart. Seven people may know that name via her early decade association with the similarly genre-blurring Platinum Pied Pipers. We never got the promised PPP-produced solo album from Lockhart, but she re-emerges here via DJ A-Trak’s Fool’s Gold label, a deceptively sweet debut that is more than simple confection. Fool’s Gold has found in Lockhart what was promised in Kid Sister. Though the two ladies of the label are not made redundant by any stretch, Lockhart’s hooks are what’s missing from the Kid equation. Cubic Zirconia’s set retains all the high points but just feels more real: As featured guest Bilal would say, there’s something to hold on to here. Highlights abound, but I keep going back to “Freebase You,” wherein she wants to “Smoke your love raw” amid a bed of ’80s funk.