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K. Michelle's career is a case study in the varying effects of commercial radio and reality television on the condition of 2010s R&B. After Kimberly Michelle Pate didn't receive proper support from her first label, her future in music was in flux. It took reality television stardom to prompt a second shot, a deal with major label Atlantic. Pate's first two albums, both great and firmly connected to soul with a modern and emotionally naked perspective, topped the R&B/Hip-Hop chart and went Top Five pop, yet a pair of its singles barely touched the Hot 100. Released while K. Michelle: My Life was nearing the end of its second season, More Issues Than Vogue wisely sticks to roughly the same makeup of Pate's first two albums. "Make the Bed, " featuring Jason Derulo, takes a somewhat surprising shot at crossover play, but it's mostly in the production and the deployment of a melodic "oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh" in the background, something like the umpteenth instance of its use in contemporary dance-pop. The front placement of two T-Pain collaborations gets the album off to a strong, strutting start. Several of her established associates, such as Blac Elvis and Pop & Oak, eventually arrive to ensure a familiar mix of traditional structures and contemporary dressing. Pate doesn't receive a songwriting credit for any of the first seven songs, but the material does tend to suit her personality, most effectively throughout the dissatisfied "Nightstand, " where she requests "Baby, please excuse my behavior, but can I get back the fucks that I gave ya? " The expletive is emphasized to signal that it definitely carries a double meaning. Pate is credited with the co-writing of the album's final five songs, highlighted by the moments when she's filing grievances, discarding a lover, and dropping her guard, possibly making the vocal booth glass rattle a bit in the process. There's also more countrified material in the mix, if in a fashion less obvious than the previous album's "God I Get It. " Apart from the frivolous "Rich, " this latter sequence is close to flawless, concluded with "Sleep Like a Baby, " a scathing anti-lullaby.
