Cupid’s “Cupid Shuffle” has filled dance floors around southern Louisiana since it was first released earlier this year. With a hip-hop vibe and steppin’-friendly grooves, line dances break out within its first moments. Time for a Change is his debut album, and it tries to be catnip for the dance floor without following the “Cupid Shuffle” model too shamelessly. He’s successful, largely because of good rhythmic sense, but also because everything’s smartly familiar. “Work” turns into a mid-tempo rewrite of “Shout” in the chorus, and “369” gets its chorus from a schoolyard jump rope chant. The references could seem a little wholesome, but loops of panted breaths as rhythmic devices give the dance tracks a little edge.

 

Halfway through, Time for a Change changes and becomes a contemporary R&B album, and at that point it becomes more ordinary. The icy synthesizers recall ’80s R&B productions and his voice makes him seem like the good guy next door who sings in church, but he doesn’t have much game in the lyrics. It sounds like he’s singing from his imagination, not experience, and he’s more effective when he’s simply being witty and creative. Still, there’s enough craft and passion in the slow jams “Someone Like You” and the rippling “Say Yes” to imagine they could be hits.

 

The album borders on being too nice—the logo is a gangsta cherub with a crossbow—but it never tips over, making the album a very promising and entertaining debut. He’s at his best when he wants to dance, and if he keeps at that, he’ll have more to sing about in the slow jams next time.