Sal Cinquemani from "Slant" gave the album three out of five stars and said ""The First Lady" is decidedly less "street," boasting a more adult sound that's timely enough to keep longtime fans and possibly even earn new ones." Though he dismissed songs such as "Ever Wonder," "Until You Came" and "Stop N Go," which he declared as either "cloying" or "sappy," he found that the album was "a mark of growth for Evans" following her slip from Bad Boy and Sean "Diddy" Combs. Orlando Lima, writing for "Vibe", also gave the album three-and-a-half out of five stars and noted that while "Evans can still finesse notes," the album had a tendency to backtracking, "covering much of the same ground as her previous offering [...] instead of continually pushing her sound into the future." He found that Evans yet had to "sway the R&B world with the weight of say, Sade's "Lovers Rock" or Mary J. Blige's "My Life"."