Thicke: Slicke or Dicke?

I realize this may not work for all the Neds or Helltimes out there.

FUCKIN THE SUMMER JAM Y'ALL

FUCKIN THE SUMMER JAM Y'ALL

also "Shooter" is unspeakably great.

Oh I slay me!

There’s a time you got to go and show
You’re growin’ now you know about the facts of life,
The facts of life.

When the world never seems to be livin up to your dreams
And suddenly you’re finding out
The facts of life are all about you, you.

It takes a lot to get ‘em right
When you’re learning the facts of life. (learning the facts of life)
Learning the facts of life (learning the facts of life)
Learning the facts of life.

The haircut is also a great relief.

finally got around to hearing non-singles on this album, so great!

the album is terrible and thicke is maybe the smarmiest singer ever and that one song w/ the teacher/pupil metaphor is really creepy

and i LIKE about...three? four? of his songs

Come on, that album is pretty great, although 'Wanna U You Girl' is a bit misleading. I see him as some kind of male Sade for the 00's.

yeah it's got that same v enticing yuppie decadence, but it's totally spoilt by...his self-awareness maybe? he comes off like a performing seal sometimes. and when he doesn't it's bizarrely anonymous and flat! 'cocaine' and 'got 2 be down' are the two i'm actually feeling.

also really hating most of the lyrics. do not need to hear any more boys complaining that no one understands them because they're too complicated maaaaan.

You missed one of the best songs on the album, "Would That Make U Love Me"

I really, really wish that falsetto singers who aren't full-on belters like Phillip Bailey would stop performing live because all it does is make them sound weak and airy.

I like the single, but on the BET Awards he did not sound that strong, and looked goofy with his thin little moustache and preppy vest sweater over tie plus old adidas sneakers look. His dancing and Jackie Wilson/James Brown falling to a knee moves were not that smoothly executed either.

his lyrics are about as good as timberlake.

also his voice is kinda weak live. saw him at the jazz cafe a while back. the girls ate it up cos of that song everyone loves (i like it too) but other than that, the albums kinda soporific.

(My previous post was prompted by his BET performance, which was pretty much the definition of "weaksauce".)

his album sounds convincing to me, and i don't get any fakeness from it. 'sade of the 00s' is overstating it maybe but its a similar vibe -

omg @ his wife:
http://images.askmen.com/galleries/celeb-profiles-actress/paula-patton/pictures/paula-patton-picture-1.jpg

have u been listening to anything in this vein recently dan? can you think of someone doing a similar vibe now that you think sings better?

i'm not arguing, just wondering!

It beats Pharell, in any case.

yeah i don't think he's anything but himself; trouble with that being dude is revolting. and double yeah, if he didnt annoy me enough already he gets to go home to paula patton?! what the shit.

bearing in mind also that that pic up there is probly the worst i've ever seen of her

It beats Pharell, in any case.

The sound of a baby wailing in pain because its legs have been pulled off by cougars beats Pharell; come on now.

have u been listening to anything in this vein recently dan? can you think of someone doing a similar vibe now that you think sings better?

Justin Timberlake, actually!

"When I get You Alone" is amazing, wtf is wrong with you people?

Apocalypse in five...four...three...

(xp)

I'm kinda in the middle on this dude, I get the feeling I'd like most of the songs on his album (his newer one) taken out of context, but listening to it one stretch is a giant fucking chore.

ok he said "kneecapped" not "disappeared" but jesus so girl talk has to live off club gigs and karmin has to credit john coltrane I am ok with this

think how much better music would be if people didn't have to credit samples, we'd be living in a world full of mash-ups oh wait

people should only play instruments they invent themselves

xpost tbf that was the end of bomb squad type productions so sure Grand Upright vs WB didn't end music but def changed the course

after it, lawsuit-fearing artists and labels demanded that every sample had to be cleared, and the result was that the art of sampling was kneecapped.

I don't think this is really disputable

"Rapper's Delight" citation is, however, p stupid

Speaking of "Rapper's Delight" it's a shame that when Chic threatened to sue Sugar Hill and successfully forced them to change the songwriting credit, the chilling effect of that ruling put an end to the hip-hop fad of 1979

xpost tbf that was the end of bomb squad type productions so sure Grand Upright vs WB didn't end music but def changed the course

i kinda get this, but at the same time i feel like bomb squad type productions were already on the way out, thanks to the chronic etc. and also there was no world where this wasn't eventually going to be an issue as rap got more and more popular

sorry by chronic i meant dr dre's production style, there's a good window of time between that, this case, and the chronic

it's possible that this case will lead to a more precedent-setting one more explicitly about "feel," but this ain't that case

but Dre deliberately shifted his production style away from his previous sample-heavy approach in order to avoid lawsuits/payment of performance royalties (thus the invention of "interpolations" and Dre getting studio musicians to re-play P-Funk songs)

xpost ("this case" being pharrell/thicke vs gaye, i mean)

rap producers have been paranoid about lawsuits from day one, since Rapper's Delight, often with good reason, and their production methods shifted according to that perception of risk

xp

but Dre deliberately shifted his production style away from his previous sample-heavy approach in order to avoid lawsuits/payment of performance royalties (thus the invention of "interpolations" and Dre getting studio musicians to re-play P-Funk songs)

this is a shift that was already in motion before wb upright, which is my point - it's not like o'sullivan invented saying "hey that's my song you're sampling," it's the legal precedent. and jury cases aren't legal precedent.

Remember too the Turtles vs. De LA Soul case, which addressed sampling re:recording ownership (since the sampled song in question was a cover).

but even if, rather than being overturned (which i find quite-plausible-to-likely), the jury verdict led to a judge saying "intent + vague similarity = infringement", it's still tickling to see record critics freaking out over music becoming less derivative because of it

the 2010s - a decade where the first half sounded like 80s genesis, and the second half sounded like 70s genesis

just two years before the chronic Dre sounded like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiDti_Xnnmo

it's still tickling to see record critics freaking out over music becoming less derivative because of it

agree this is ridiculous, but I think you're under-selling the degree to which legal issues impacted people like Dre's production styles. rap producers didn't make that production switch solely on aesthetic grounds

looking back i wasn't being clear, but i didn't mean to imply dre was doing it solely for aesthetic reasons. when i said the change was already in motion, i meant because smart guys like dre knew you wouldn't get away with rapping over other peoples records for free forever

ok yeah that makes more sense, the writing was definitely on the wall by the time of the Turtles lawsuit

actually before then even - Rick James suing Hammer in '90

as mentioned up thread, chic threatened to sue the sugarhill gang way back when

i will say the bomb squad bricolage style was always going to be a novelty - and there are certainly plenty of examples of the "sample a lot of shit" aesthetic in the twenty years since the court case - it's not like the dust brothers stopped getting work, they just couldn't slap eight obvious beatles hooks together

...and go gold without paying them, at least

i mean fuck dj shadow

as mentioned up thread, chic threatened to sue the sugarhill gang way back when

yeah but that's different than the Bomb Squad/Dre/Dust Brothers/whoever else you wanna throw in there, who were more than likely all thinking they could make a credible legal defense based on *how* they were using the samples (ie not just lifting an entire song outright). I haven't really read anything authoritative on this subject but once sampling started to become central to rap I'd be curious to know if any of the producers were genuinely surprised with what they managed to get away with, however briefly.

i mean fuck dj shadow

amen

my understanding is that there was this window in rap between old school guys figuring out that they couldn't get away with just rapping over/re-creating existing records, which led, in part to stuff like Run DMC and more drum machine+synth heavy compositions, but then shortly after that with samplers becoming cheaper and more powerful DJs were like "fuck it, I'm sampling that break Bambaataa used to play" and then it snowballed from there until enough old dudes smelled money and lawyered up. And then after that that heavy-duty bricolage-style became less frequent and more of a game of hide-and-seek between the producers and the sampled dudes (ie, you could get away with it as long as you could evade detection or made some deal up-front)

yeah i just think it's weird to think bricolage was going to be the fore-front of hip-hop as it got more and more pop, on some level it was always going to lead to girl talk. the court case just confirmed you couldn't make a mint off other people's records without paying them.

and this court case at worst confirms that "feel" vs notes-on-the-page is an issue, and if you push that issue, don't put jackasses in front of a jury

Old Dolph ‏@alshipley 2h2 hours ago

Pharrell issues statement: "Haven't they heard me sing? I'm clearly ripping off Curtis Mayfield, it's his family that...uh don't print this"
3 retweets 10 favorites

I think the thing about all these panic-type Matos/Wolk "chilling precedent" pieces that rubs me the wrong way is that, taken to their logical conclusion, they seem to suggest that musicians don't actually own what they create. I love sampling and homage as much as the next listener. And as a musician myself, I love it even more as I would venture to say every interesting thing I've ever done has its roots in me massacring an imitation of something else.

But at the same time, I find it kind of odd to be arguing that this stuff is essentially in the public domain. It's not. "Rappers' Delight" is one example of a song that, quite simply, wouldn't exist without what Chic did. Same for "Blurred Lines," however much a departure the actual song is from the inspiration. And the Bomb Squad/ Dust Bros. ethos. The idea that the creators should owe something more than "a debt of gratitude" doesn't seem far fetched to me.

One thing worth noting that I didn't know until a few years ago is that advertising regularly addresses the issue of feel and style. If you want to do a car ad in the style of Randy Newman or Leon Redbone, you pay a fee. It isn't as much as using an actual song, but it is something.

None of this is to say that there shouldn't be some updating for the 21st-century. But I would also argue that the Dre examples upthread demonstrate once again how limitations really do breed creativity. And at the end of the day, when you think about how awful the industry has been to the actual creators of music product, rules that require artists to be paid for the commercial usage of their appropriation isn't something I think we want to be backing away from.

If you want to do a car ad in the style of Randy Newman or Leon Redbone, you pay a fee. It isn't as much as using an actual song, but it is something.

iirc, Carlos Santana's lawsuit in 1990 set the precedent/terms for this:
http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1990/Guitarist-Carlos-Santana-Sues-Miller-Beer-Over-Commercial/id-d2d871dcb18ffed5fe6403a1d2e7cb3c

tom waits sued frito-lay for the same thing, right? that was in '88

But advertising is different because a sound-a-like tricks people into thinking they're hearing the original artist, and therefore that the artist endorses ad syncs and that product in particular. No artist name is attached. Waits sued Frito-Lay for "voice misappropriation and false endorsement". Neither claim applies in the Blurred Lines case.

but people might think Marvin Gaye had questionable ideas about sex!

Objection sustained

Old Dolph ‏@alshipley 2h2 hours ago

Pharrell issues statement: "Haven't they heard me sing? I'm clearly ripping off Curtis Mayfield, it's his family that...uh don't print this"
3 retweets 10 favorites

― dow, Friday, March 13, 2015 7:25 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol this was retweeted yesterday by Kirk Mayfield, son of Curtis ;_;

Their's only one Curtis Mayfield funny how someone will try to be him and want to make a living off his hard wrk! #Fupayme #Mayfieldforever

Funny.

is ILM talking about this anywhere else:

http://defamer.gawker.com/kelly-clarksons-new-song-sounds-just-like-jimmy-eat-wor-1679262619

this is hilarious

its insane

it was definitely brought up in a kelly clarkson thread

There’s a thing that Marcel Proust referred to as supersaturation. When the past, present, and future all become very clear and high-definition and surround-sound in one moment. My supersaturation came right after I performed on the BET Awards [in June 2014]. I dedicated the performance [of the song “Forever Love”] to my ex. And I came home, and my best friend of 20 years, Craig Crawford, said, “I saw your BET performance.” And I said: “Oh yeah! What did you think?” You know — excited. And he goes: “I gotta be honest with you, buddy. You’re kind of playing yourself. You look like a sucker.” And it hit me that I’d lost my perspective. What I thought was romantic was just embarrassing. And he said, “You should just go away for a while.” So I shut everything down. I took some time off to be with my son, and to be with my family and close friends. And the more time I took off, the more everything became clear.

Going Thicke

so...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CWksoNpXsU

Genericke but fine.

nicki verse lmao

but this song is a jam

Incredible longread about how cursed this song was

There was a lengthy discussion in the “Pfork sux” thread

really good article, one interestingly enough that seems to have mirrored the discussion of the song itself on ILX as it progressed over time (though conversation on it dried it after the trial mostly)