2005 came the release of ‘All That I Am’, a collaboration of popular artists featuring on almost every track of Santana’s new album. With the well-praised release of Santana ft. Rob Thomas ‘Smooth’ in 1999/2000, maybe Carlos Santana thought that he could sustain this collaborative success in his latest album.

Throughout the years, you may have recognised Santana shredding it up on songs like ‘All the Love in the Universe’ or just cooking some spicy luscious latin ballads like ‘Black Magic Woman’, and think, “Damn, Santana’s a pretty rad dude”.

Well, not anymore. The colloboration effort success didn’t sustain, and the new album flatout stinks. Carlos Santana is one of those lads you’d think is ‘all about the music, man’. He gives off that native latin vibe … plus, he’s old and mexican.

But nope, he’s just an asshole who’d rather trade original, respectful, jazzy soulful guitar based rock with commercial success.

A former-fan protesting outside Santana’s house.
When I first saw a tracklisting for the album and saw Will.I.Am, Michelle Branch and Sean Paul I thought…huh? Is this Timbaland’s new album? This looks terrible. The only thing enticing track was Trinity with features Kirk Hammet.

Yay, I thought - at least one good artist to make at least one track good. But no! It’s boring and stale. A basic instrumental song, with no evident, outstanding special carlos sauce to spice it up. The track end’s up being just 3 minutes of donkey’s having sex.

As much as you’d like to see it, my advertising won’t let me demonstrate what “Trinity” is like.

When I first heard ‘Just Feel Better’ featuring Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler, I was suprised that this was the album that this song was on. I’d always heard it on the radio and thought it was just Aerosmith.

On re-listening, no wonder Santana never popped in my head - Steven Tyler is the only thing that makes the song, Santana’s guitar is hardly outstanding, and sound’s half-assed anyway.

Other songs like ‘I Don’t Wanna Lose Your Love’ just sound too generic. Aswell as having the most un-inspired title, the opening verses are:

If you don’t love me baby
Let me know
Cause you’re breaking my heart
And it hurts me so

Come on, your not even trying anymore if you can’t come up with anything better than that.

Carlos Santana’s nephew - head writer.

In the end the album ends up being a stale collobration effort which features no true originals. The phrase is overused, but it’s too applicable - What happened to you Santana, you used to be cool.

Carlos Santana once stated “Some songs are just like tattoos for your brain… you hear them and they’re affixed to you.”
Make sure you get any tattoos from this album laser-removed, asap.