Well, he has total creative control over his next album, because he's producing it himself independently. If it doesn't succeed, then his career as a recording artist is probably finished for good.
It's just my opinion, but after he was dropped by BMG, I think he should have tried to get signed by a small-to-medium sized label. That way, he'd be a big fish in a smaller pond. He could have creative control, and the label would have every incentive to pull out all the stops for him to succeed. The odds are enormously stacked against a self-produced album.
With that being said I bought his first effort and there were only like 3 listenable songs on it. The rest made me cringe. It went straight to the shoe box under my bed of CD's I bought that I wish I hadn't.
I almost wrote the guy saying "You have the use of AI Studios and Clive Davis songsmiths and this is best you can do?" Regardless of artistic control you have input and can do something better than that.