Rolling R&B Thread 2010

is the monica album good btw? wasn't really keen on the lead single.

looking fwd to the mix btw. teairra mari and mavado together?!

"COINS" IS F'ING AMAZING why did no one tell me about this until now!!!

is the monica album good btw? wasn't really keen on the lead single.

looking fwd to the mix btw. teairra mari and mavado together?!

Hey Lex, the Monica album is a solid r&b album. If you are just looking for a singer singing in a direct 90s r&b style. I like it because she seems to finally restrain her voice which makes the texture of it all the richer. She is slowly competing against my preference of Brandy who has great texture to her voice but has limited range.

Oh btw, thank you lex for agreeing with me. I thought I was going crazy with observing this trend of r&b. It's creepy to me that their is this "need to go pop" sentiment that is becoming so prevalent. Maybe it has always been there in the r&b market, but it is more heigten due to the internet. Maybe it is driven by the recession and the music industry wants to have maximum profits on the few releases they have out. Their probably are sociological aspects with this sentiment as well.

The thing is though that until very recently, there wasn't a lot of music that was very definitely r&b rather than pop-qua-pop that was successful with crossover audiences but now it seems like nothing is splitting the difference. Why is that?

Maybe it has always been there in the r&b market, but it is more heigten due to the internet.

yeah r&b's always existed in this weird area whereby it's its own genre with its own rules and values - ie integrity - but that's also placed a premium on commercial success (and unlike hip-hop, which can get away with inward-facing localism, this generally means chart success and mainstream profile). so because it's so "pop" already, it rarely gets away with being viewed as "art" - ie, r&b artists are generally not forgiven by critics or fans for perceived commercial failures. (poor ciara.)

Maybe it is driven by the recession and the music industry wants to have maximum profits on the few releases they have out.

yeah, when this trend started to hit a couple of years ago it was easy to attribute it to the recession making labels taking an even more conservative, safety-first approach than they normally would.

also, the last few years have really seen pro-pop blogs entrench their values in the mainstream (where their idea of pop is a specific aesthetic rather than "what's in the charts") - from popjustice to perez hilton, broadly; and a LOT of them have a fit of the vapours every time anything that codes overtly black comes into view, like they'll get cooties from it. it's most obvious w/r/t their fear of rappers, but it also applies to any r&b star who's perceived to be not trying hard enough to be all happy and pop and shiny.

i'll check out the monica album btw.

oh yeah, i heard half the jazmine sullivan album today. wait'll you all hear "redemption", that song will blow you away. spoken word/rapped verses, one from a crack whore's perspective and one from a male domestic abuser's perspective, and an absolutely massive gospel chorus. there's also a mj-esque disco number called "don't make me wait" where she actually sings with restraint and subtlety (!). and a big retro-sounding ballad called "excuse me" where she does not, at all. looking good so far, basically.

very jealous of you right now, it sounds amazing

The thing is though that until very recently, there wasn't a lot of music that was very definitely r&b rather than pop-qua-pop that was successful with crossover audiences but now it seems like nothing is splitting the difference. Why is that?

― ENBBQ (The Reverend), Tuesday, October 12, 2010 2:42 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think there's a couple different things going on. one is that R&B is kinda going through the same thing as rap, where crossover-by-design artists like BEP, Flo Rida, B.o.B., etc. are making huge hits mostly via pop radio, urban radio might play it some or not but it doesn't live or die by that. the Jason DeRulo/Iyaz/Jay Sean etc. types kind of fill the niche in pop/top 40 playlists that Chris Brown or Ne-Yo might've 2-4 years ago without getting any R&B play, and seem to be descended from Akon and Rihanna, who sometimes get their hits all over urban radio but not always. combine that with some of the bigger all-the-way-R&B hitmakers either not doing super well or crossing over that much with their latest projects (Mary J, R. Kelly, The-Dream, the aforementioned Chris Brown and Ne-Yo) and some of the Beyonce-level stars being between albums. maybe in a year this will all have reversed completely, maybe the trend will keep going in that direction, I dunno.

oh yeah, i heard half the jazmine sullivan album today.

Wasn't there suppose to be a Vanity 6 tribute on that album? That was talked about like a year ago in press during the early stages of the album.

This thread = Skillz' annual "Rap up" song, but for R&B. I feel totally caught up and have been spared sifting through a lot of garbage to find the gems.

Fantasia (and I'm really no Fantasia fan) and Monica (albeit retro/vintage Monica) were the pleasant surprises of the year IMO.

I was looking forward to Marsha Ambrosious (Floetry), but they pushed it back to Jan. 2011.

Apart from the occasional bright spots, the only thing I can stand these days is so-called Neo soul / grown folks R&B -- for lack of a better classification:

>> Neo Soul artists

Ambrosius pushed back AGAIN?

bizarre -- "hey the single is on every station in the country, better push the release date back"

We’ll be releasing her album alongside the US on the 29th November, though just letting it become available no marketing or press push.

weird -- from my end, I'd have guessed Sullivan's new single would be a good fit with a lot of stuff that does well in the UK, especially with the way the vocal's treated

yeah i would have thought so too.

idk, retro in the uk seems to have to be that particularly ersatz, ronsonised style to pass muster on radio, not the cratediggery collage of the jazmine. and black US artists all vanish into an unpromoted void of soft releases and minimal press in the UK unless they're a) well-established or b) "go pop" in a really obvious way (see discussion above), whether that's b.o.b. getting soft-serve beats and rock singers on his hooks or the grim hell that usher's career has descended into.

fantasia and monica albums not promoted one iota over here either.

It's funny how Kelly Rowland has become the circa-2006 kings of leon r&b singer when it comes to us/uk fanbases

feeling this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkje46ta_10

that is very dreamy and reverby

very nice

RIGHT does anyone out there have the og demo version of trina's "here we go" with teedra m on the hook instead of rowland? i ask this every few years and no one's come thru yet :(

yo "slow jam" is my shit !!!!!!!

production kinda reminds me of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvM6XK1hL6U

could do without lil keke tbh

who is charlene renee?

nvm feeling the lil keke verse now

can someone recommend me a few songs in this vein, shit like keri's "slow dance" and e red's "devotion" etc, this breathy, sexy falsetto shit? male or female

these are my favorite kind of songs

did u get the teedra moses

damn no i still need to listen to her

teedra's just put a bunch of her mixtapes up on her site for free d/l - you absolutely need complex simplicity though obv

did we miss the new lloyd single??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSkRBCPRf8Q&ob=av2n

his voice is kind.... of strangulated? it's weird. polow on the beat.

does he sound like michael on this or is it just me?

im drunk but DOPE IMO

i love that

i feel like i've heard it before though for some reason

what does the rev think about his voice here

sounds to me like he's taking out some of the heights of his falsetto and aiming more for trey's crowd. definite MJ sound. a bit less gonzo and a really restrained polow beat too.
this is making the rounds on BET right now

Kells style yodeling!

i love that

i feel like i've heard it before though for some reason

― avoyoungdro's number (k3vin k.), Saturday, 23 October 2010 14:01

cuz I posted it already lol

can't listen to that now, but i've been pro-lloyd since like "get it shawty". i posted new lloyd earlier this year.

lex has been really pro Lloyd iirc

haha brainwasher, i knew it! dope song

lolz get a grip, damn near everyone has been pro lloyd round here for years - certainly don't ever recall any outright haters at least

right i didn't mean to imply otherwise - given rev's distaste for someone like holiday's voice i was curious what he'd think of this partic song

This Electrik Red tune is new right? http://www.rap-up.com/2010/10/23/new-music-electrik-red-put-ya-money-on-it-africa/

As of right now, of the top 10 songs on the Hot 100, only "Bottoms Up" is a hit on the R&B chart. Six of those ten songs are by black performers. Eight are by minorities.

I feel like labels for the most part don't really understand this R&B chart schism. They keep pushing back albums by artists who have huge R&B hits that aren't crossing over, even though those artists' core audiences already have their appetites whetted.

lloyd joint quickly becoming one of my favorite of the year

came to the conclusion that "bottoms up" > "blame it"

also this new keri single is the shit