I guess you can say that her R&B are not pure R&B. It's more like Jpop style R&B (not sure tho if that's the reason you dun really like her R&B
).
And the reason I love First Love is not about R&B or so. The flow and the feeling of naive/young make me loving the album very much. (I listened to this album when I was 18, so it kinda matched my mood back then lol).
Distance, on the other hand, was like something blocking the flow inside the pipe. The (album) songs are good, but not good enough. Also, she's like trying a piece of this style, then she tried another piece. She glued them together and the feeling just didn't match at all. She did the same thing in DEEP RIVER but it was much much better. (IMO DR is her best album
).
Edit: oh... my post is the 500th post... are we gonna start a new thread? lol...