No one deserves to live their adult life defined by the person they were at thirteen. I wouldn’t wish young internet fame on anybody, but when I was a middle schooler and YouTube became the latest frontier of child stardom, it was a different story. I saw Justin Bieber get a major label contract by uploading videos of himself singing and thought he must be the luckiest kid in the world. Then, the first cautionary tale came in the form of Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” which dethroned Bieber’s “Baby” as the most disliked YouTube video and was inescapable for months—every Friday afternoon, the doors of my middle school flung open to the tune of dozens of twelve-year-olds mockingly singing “gotta get down on Friday!” I assume the scene at every middle school in the country was near identical. I don’t think there’s an adult alive who isn’t embarrassed by their middle school-aged self. Most of us are lucky enough, though, to not have shared those cringe-inducing memories with an international audience. I guess this is my long-winded way of saying that I really do want to see Rebecca Black as more than the lolcow she was made out to be as a teen pop star. I want to believe that there is an interesting artist beneath the veneer of “the ‘Friday’ girl, all grown up.” Unfortunately, hearing her sing “I wanna be perceived” on “Speakerphone,” the blatant Kesha ripoff closer of her album Age of  the Exhibitionist, does not make that easy. Three albums into an adult solo career, Black still hasn’t found her sound, and still lacks any real motivation beyond a desire for fame. If it weren’t clear from the title of her album, Rebecca Black wants you to watch her—on stage, on your phone, at the BDSM party where she’s “getting freaky with strangers like this is Chatroulette.” That line comes from “Waschesalon,” and it’s one of the more clever ones on Age of the Exhibitionist. Even if its bass pulses feel a bit like cheap imitations of the ones SOPHIE concocted for “Vroom Vroom,” Black’s song about a laundromat that doubles as a Berghain basement-style sex club is a highlight on an album whose naughtiness usually feels like a costume put on for shock value. Opener “Anaheim Star” is another one of Age of the Exhibitionist’s stronger tracks, if a bit too heavily referential: Rick James and Guns N Roses interpolations, surface level “indie sleaze” signifiers (“lip gloss and a ciggie,” a Cobrasnake namedrop). Even the stompy cheerleader chant hook feels ripped straight from Gwen Stefani and Lil Mama hits—Zara Larsson did the same thing last year on “Ugly,” and she did it better. The energy of Age of the Exhibitionist slowly depletes from there, but “Anaheim Star” sets the tone for a record that suffers from a terminal case of moodboard syndrome. Instead of informing her own artistry, it feels as though Black is relying on her influences to speak for her. Lady Gaga’s nachos are stale and room temp on “Hot Wet Delirious” and “Metamorphia,” and she even shoots her shot at Gaga on a grating drum ’n bass track named after the singer’s husband. Though Black’s largely (and thankfully) moved past the hyperpop phase that marked her rebrand, it still overstays its welcome on the Fergie-interpolating “Miss Delicious.” Do we really need more nostalgia for twenty years ago, shoved inside nostalgia for five years ago? “Miss Delicious” sticks out like a sore thumb between two highlights “Corsetry” and “Pistol”; the latter’s twisty synths spiral out in a way that gives Age of the Exhibitionist some much-needed momentum, while the former’s rattling trip-hop take on femdom gunplay is unexpectedly entrancing. Unfortunately, Black can’t help but reference, even to the song she’s just finished singing: “Pistol”’s retread on the following “Backstage Baby Interlude” feels superfluous—too much of a good thing turning it boring. Partial title track “Exhibitionism” adds little insight or intrigue on its subject matter. Neither pure kink-pop fantasy nor a dissection of the exhibitionistic impulses inherent to pursuing fame, the track coasts on a painfully generic Jersey Club instrumental and an insipid, title-only chorus. The exhibitionist pop persona might be a more exciting one for Black to embody if she brought anything uniquely “her” to it, other than a permeating stench of desperation. “Just made a million off my so-called mediocrity,” Black chants mechanically on “Waschesalon.” Congrats on another million. [Self-Released] Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Alternative, ANTICS, Marvin, Swim Into The Sound, and her “mostly about music” newsletter, Our Band Could Be Your Wife.