The idea of a Gen Z Destiny’s Child sounds great in theory – but could it ever work as imagined by an Island Records executive in 2019? This is the original story of Flo, a London three-piece recruited off Instagram who have since attracted high-profile admirers and collaborators such as Stormzy, who featured the trio on a remix of his track “Hide & Seek”, and Missy Elliott, who rapped on 2023’s “Fly Girl” (which samples her 2002 hit “Work It”). There’s another glitzy turn on their debut album, Access All Areas , as Wicked actress Cynthia Erivo pops up on its opening song, “Intro”, welcoming “a tenacious trio of talented young ladies”. It’s a stilted, sterile and just plain weird way to start a record, unless it is intended ironically (which does not seem to be the case).
For all the stardust sprinkled through their CV, Flo have failed to put a meaningful dent in the charts – and the generic and often dull Access All Areas suggests a band struggling to find their voice. In her spoken-word introduction, Erivo claims Jorja Douglas, Stella Quaresma and Renée Downer are receiving “the baton passed on by Destiny’s Child”. That’s the problem: they never go beyond sounding like a slick simulacrum of a late-1990s girl group.
The real disappointment is the lack of individuality. From Sugababes to Little Mix , British female pop has always been more interesting than its American counterpart because the singers seemed like real people rather tha.
