Janelle Monae

On "Come Alive" and "Tightrope" she sounds to my ears like someone grimly determined to give you a good time, rictus grin, dance contortions and all; and just when you think she's exhausted you she introduces special guests Of Montreal. The thing is structured like a variety show: moments of fun and virtuosity, but wearying.

I think this is more true on a meta/structural level (Here's another stylistic shift! Here's Of Montreal!) than on a performative level. With some obvious exceptions, for the most part her singing plays it very "straight" I think.

I understand the distinction, Tim, but in my mind I conflate the "structural" and the performative because her voice is so blank. Nature abhors a vacuum, etc.

The only reason you're saying her voice sounds blank is because she sounds like someone who has had voice lessons.

waht

Donna Summer and Dusty Springfield, to name two wildly disparate characters who had voice lessons, were not blank.

thats a jam sandwich tho, isnt it?

I'm going to bed, serenaded by the untutored pipes of Alex Kapranos.

You promised a cookie! (Alfred, my elevating the discourse post was actually a dig at me. I tried several different posts in reply to your recent posts and then I realized all I really wanted to say was pfffffft.)

ya that's really not a cookie.

& this is rtc&bROCKISM

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f14/snouts/6ns6tx.gif

is that ryan phillippe in cruel intentions? <3

it is!

a hero indeed

lol@the jazmine sullivan etc comparisons. the constant comparisons of monae to contemp/mainstream R&B women artists is wrong.

I said she was the opposite of jazmine duh.

shes coming to london next month apparently. but its sold out, some BS industry-only schmoozer. no matter, this album is actually great (listening now). better than ciara, jazmine, the preposterously overrated teedra moses and even erykah id say, judging by that lazy last effort she turned in. all the stuff i wasnt sure about wrt her emotional conviction etc is kinda right in terms of it being quite stagey at times - it is a PERFORMANCE - but its also kinda bullshit cos some of the melodies are actually gorgeous and the contours and purity of the grain of her voice is just wondrous. janelle>>>>>>

its not industry only, it just sold out really fast. tiny venue too, but annoyingly i'm out of the country.

even erykah id say, judging by that lazy last effort she turned in

You need to relisten to this. It's much more relaxed, laid back, comfortable in its own skin... not lazy. Very nuanced, subtle.

also: unfinished/padded out songs/generally below par songwriting.

Obv titchy's failure to get teedra pretty much undermines his credibility w/r/t passing judgement on R&B albums.

It sounds like people would be better off not listening to this so much as an R&B album.

I wanted to listen to the album again before I put my vehement disagreement with this on record, but... this is totally an R&B album. In fact once you remove the interludes it's no more boundary-blurring than Solange's last album (this is not a criticism btw!). Guess what: most R&B albums already are pretty diverse! It's not like the territory Janelle covers here (in the actual songs) is obviously broader than the space between, say, "Disappear" and "Radio" on Beyonce's last album.

I love "Faster" by the way. "Tightrope" bugs me though, and I reckon it's because there seems to be no relationship between the music and the vocals in the chorus, they almost feel out of tune with one another. The verses are fine. Actually it's pretty consistent for me to like Janelle's verses more than her choruses.

I'm not saying I think it's not a R&B album, but based on many of the complaints I've seen on this thread some people seem to not be enjoying what she's doing partly because she is failing to do things they expect of R&B performers. Seriously, I remember a bunch of comments like that upthread. (At least that's one of the reasons they are giving.) Bunch of comments deleted (nothing incendiary), because I need to be careful what I say about R&B (because I don't listen to a whole lot of it, even the older stuff I tend to like more--although I expect to come around to that at some point).

"Obv titchy's failure to get teedra pretty much undermines his credibility w/r/t passing judgement on R&B albums."

teedra has like, ONE great song, and a load of filler elsewhere, despite being in possession of a great voice. teedra is def *not* an albums artist.

I'm looking forward to the new lease of life this thread will get when Geir turns up and proclaims it the best R&B album ever.

xpost sure, beyonce has a few pop rock songs like if i was a boy, but beyonce makes unashamedly commercial music. *pop songs*. JM doesnt. shes sort of on that edge, like say, bilal, various songs that could possibly get urban radio airplay, but mainly songs that wouldnt/couldnt cos her sound is quite different (she in particular ahs a lot more of a strange 60s influence throughout i think, not ronson-ish, but one that sort of reminds me of old film soundtracks, noir, or sci fi, not sure). tim do you listen to non-commercial R&B?

Didn't Maxwell get a load of airplay?

when? when he first came out? probably. most of these guys have 1 or 2 songs with wider appeal (i could even see a couple of the ballads on JMs album getting R&B radio airplay). but basically, beyonce is gonna get on pop radio. maxwell isnt. usher will get on pop radio. bilal wont. and so on.

xpost sure, beyonce has a few pop rock songs like if i was a boy, but beyonce makes unashamedly commercial music. *pop songs*. JM doesnt. shes sort of on that edge, like say, bilal, various songs that could possibly get urban radio airplay, but mainly songs that wouldnt/couldnt cos her sound is quite different (she in particular ahs a lot more of a strange 60s influence throughout i think, not ronson-ish, but one that sort of reminds me of old film soundtracks, noir, or sci fi, not sure). tim do you listen to non-commercial R&B?

Titchy you're being silly. Of course Janelle isn't pop-R&B in the order of Beyonce, I never said she was. What I'm saying is:

1) she's basically in the same R&B tradition as, say, Solange; and

2) rudipherous is over-stating its genre-smashing diversity and understating the diversity of R&B generally. There's no direct comparison between Beyonce and Janelle but my point is that R&B as a genre already encourages artists to cover a lot of ground and saying "you shouldn't think of this as an R&B album because it covers so much ground" is as wrong w/r/t Janelle as it would be w/r/t Beyonce.

Compare/contrast with, say, Me'Shell N'dgeocello's last couple of albums, which are much more tenuously connected to contemporary R&B (of the mainstream or post-neo-soul varieties) than Janelle, but which I still think of as "R&B albums".

I guarantee that if I played any track on this (except possibly the Of Montreal track) to someone in my office they would identify it as R&B without thinking about it.

better than ciara, jazmine, the preposterously overrated teedra moses and even erykah id say

lol stop trollin, titchy

rudipherous is over-stating its genre-smashing diversity and understating the diversity of R&B generally. There's no direct comparison between Beyonce and Janelle but my point is that R&B as a genre already encourages artists to cover a lot of ground and saying "you shouldn't think of this as an R&B album because it covers so much ground" is as wrong w/r/t Janelle as it would be w/r/t Beyonce.

I can completely understand where you would get the idea, but I really never linked the not thinking of this as an R&B album with the whole genre-smashing thing. I can see where you would think that's implied, but it's not exactly what I have in mind.

If I had to be more cautious, I could have said something like: "It sounds like people would be better off not listening to this so much as a contemporary, mainstream R&B album (with the stylistic expectations that brings)."

I think titchy is thinking along similar (but better informed than me) lines in the comments you quote.

Actually, I forgot how much that comment was in response to what you had written. This is exactly the sort of thing I have in mind:

I've listened to this twice. Always starts very exciting but everything starts to blur after a while? I think it's maybe Janelle's technically well-done but emotionally blank vocals that makes this a "challenging" listen for me (at this stage at any rate), much more than the arrangements which mostly seem pretty gregarious and outgoing and fun.

― Tim F, Tuesday, June 15, 2010 5:49 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah the voice is amazing, but there's no real sense of an actual person behind it (and this has zero to do with the whole android thing). I had the same stumbling block with her earlier material. It reminds me somewhat of Kelis's "Little Suzie", a tune which I always felt I should love more than I did.

― Tim F, Tuesday, June 15, 2010 6:26 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"sense of an actual person behind it"

oh, that's usually a lie anyway.

― exuding an aroma of lolz (Hunt3r), Tuesday, June 15, 2010 6:30 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I know, but it's a pretty important lie in R&B!

― Tim F, Tuesday, June 15, 2010 6:36 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I don't mean "who is Janelle Monae really", but rather that her vocals usually don't make me care about the singer, the character-of-the-song.

― Tim F, Tuesday, June 15, 2010 6:37 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

From what you are saying, this seems like a specifically R&B-related expectation that's getting in the way of your enjoying the album. This is more of the sort of thing I was thinking of than the genre-smashing theme. I could swear there were other comments along these lines earlier, but I admit I'm not finding them (maybe searching under "R&B" is not bringing them up). It's possible I simply creatively mis-remembered based on some speculations HI DERE made earlier (which definitely come close to the issue I think I'm dealing with here):

I don't know, maybe it's a little too self-satisfied/inward-looking to properly reach out to people, at least in the way they expect from something under the R&B umbrella? (ie, no one is going to complain about Portishead navel-gazing all over Third because that's kind of why you buy Portishead albums; they are pulling you into their little world and blowing your mind on their terms, whereas most R&B/hip-hop seems to move along the axis of blaring out into your world and taking it over, so maybe something like this that is so determinedly inward-looking with all of these normally outward-facing signifiers is confounding people because the two approaches cancel each other out and you're left with something that comes across more clinical than you think it should be? Kind of making up stuff here but maybe that's part of what's happening when people listen to this?)

Those comments really caught my attention partly because I had already been thinking of Janelle Monae + trip-hop but keeping that to myself. Like, some of Monae's vocals on the ballads seem like what I wish Portishead vocals sounded like. (But maybe that's beside the point.)

Also, this thing I said earlier is worth repeating, I think:

Given the list of artists Monae has the most praise for, and especially the inclusion of Lauryn Hill on that list, why would it be noteworthy that this doesn't appeal to someone who really likes Electrik Red or Cassie? This album has more in common with something like Kate Bush's Aerial or Tokyo Jihen's Adult (or Shiina Ringo's failed Sanmon Gossip) than with a lot of the R&B I see getting praised on ILM.

(Although, I admit it's odd to question whether this is an R&B album in one breath (edited out here) and then mention Monae's drawing on Lauryn Hill in the next sentence. Duh.) I think if I could better put into words the comparison I'm making here between the ArchAndroid and Aerial and Adult (I know the latter is a little bit of an esoteric example, but it's an important album to me personally and TJ are pretty high-profile in their native Japan), it would be clearer that the "genre-smashing" thing isn't the main point.

I think you're arguing against a position that no one's taking here.

That's usually safest.

I'm not comparing Janelle to Electrik Red. But I think it's preposterous to suggest that "Tightrope" et. al. aren't R&B songs and don't in basically every sense intentionally shroud themselves in the affectations of R&B* - so if I'm thinking of Janelle in those terms I think she's really brought that on herself. She hasn't departed from R&B enough to simply do away with the conventions of that genre. And it's not the case that I'm saying "oh this isn't as good as x other R&B"; rather that, if you take a song like "Locked Inside", which is trying to be this big bittersweet celebratory soulful 60s-meets-disco R&B song, it's the kind of song which is gonna "work" more easily if you end up investing in the character-of-the-singer (as I do with Solange's similar but more successful "Sandcastle Disco"), and there's a distancing effect with Janelle which makes this more difficult. In the case of "Locked Inside" I think it's, again, largely an issue with the chorus - I think multitracking the vocals at that point diminishes the emotional effect.

*certainly more so than those of Portishead or Kate Bush! Also I cant imagine wanting to fuck with Beth Gibbons' vocals, but anyway.

I mean it's actually totally weirdly counter-intuitive that you'd raise Portishead and Kate Bush here, given Kate and Beth's stocks-in-trade are vocals that are bursting with emotional over-investment, semiotic material that cannot be reduced to the lyrics. Whereas with Janelle (and this is occasionally a very charming quality) her vocals are always so precise and narrativist.

Agreed that the ballads here ("Sir Greendown", "57821", "Say You'll Go") are largely lovely, these are actually the moments when the album gets most Broadway and I think in a general sense they're the album's strongest moments (though I still love "Faster" most I think).

x-post

I can see your point, but I still think the album creates this sort of overarching context which diffuses those R&B expectations (or should?). This is inadequately brief (or just inadequate maybe), but I have to get to work.

(I still don't agree that Janelle Monae's vocals are as emotionally blank as you say they are.)

cant imagine wanting to fuck with Beth Gibbons' vocals, but anyway

I don't like them at all.

Haha I can see that re Kate Bush. I wasn't even particularly thinking of the vocals, oddly enough.

when? when he first came out? probably. most of these guys have 1 or 2 songs with wider appeal (i could even see a couple of the ballads on JMs album getting R&B radio airplay). but basically, beyonce is gonna get on pop radio. maxwell isnt. usher will get on pop radio. bilal wont. and so on.

― truffle-flavoured french fry (titchyschneiderMk2), Thursday, June 17, 2010 1:43 AM Bookmark

Dude. "Pretty Wings" was #1 on the (pretty much airplay-only) R&B charts for 14 weeks.

titchy has horrible & totally wrong opinions so often its kind of O_O

real heads will know that it's titchyschneider that is actually ilx's premier subliminal chinese water-torturer - geir is but childs play in comparison.

― r|t|c, Thursday, 22 October 2009 13:20 (7 months ago) Bookmark

honestly one of the most sublimely irritating trolls in internet history imo

i almost wanna respect the hustle but

u right tho, geir is so easy to get a bead on by comparison

the problem with calling it R&B is that you say R&B and you think of ciara, beyonce, cassie, keri hilson, you get the idea. of course you can say lauryn hill, alicia, solange, and erykah are all R&B too, and yes, of course they are, but its a totally different side of it (even if alicia and solange and well lots of artists are now blurring with much poppier stuff than before). i mean world wide underground vol 1 has next to nothing in common with beyonce does it? (give or take maybe a few similar samples here and there). its like saying idk, green day is the same as black dice (to use an extreme example). i think ive already said this upthread already, not sure why people have to take it as an insult to think that this is MORE than just a standard, commercial pop R&B record, when thats exactly what it is. comparing this album with a beyonce album is insulting. (even if on stage, in a live setting, there are more similarities - the R&B tradition of showwomanship being in much evidence etc)

Titchy this boils down to you saying "I have an unnecessarily and unreasonably restrictive notion of R&B and this album sometimes falls outside of that."

or, it boils down to you saying "i have a large umbrella definition of R&B in which there is no room for nuanced definition other than it all being R&B. i do not believe in there being sub strands or sub genres and i refuse to believe that such a thing as neo soul ever existed and bilal and usher are all cut of the same cloth"

I'm not saying this is "just" an R&B album, I'm saying for the most part it falls within established R&B traditions (just not Usher's - as if Usher exhaustively defines R&B!). If anything, the fact of neo-soul's existence is a large part of why saying "this album shouldn't be thought of as R&B" makes little sense. Umbrellas can be made of more than one cloth, titch.

Did you experience almost unbearable cognitive dissonance when listening to Lina and Tweet's albums?

tears for fears are not a rock band. they are not within the traditions of little richard

http://i46.tinypic.com/2r7c1h4.gif

She's someone I respect and like the concept of more than the actual experience. Her David Letterman performance was amazing though.

i never said it wasnt R&B, just that it wasnt the same type of R&B as the cassies and ciaras of this world. so its still r&b, in the same way black dice and green day (or whoever) can still both be rock.