Rolling R&B Thread 2010

New decade, new thread right? So, yeah 2009 was kind of a lackluster year R&B-wise (especially in terms of female r&b, the males really stepped their game up though). A lot of the promising releases of the year were either huge disappointments or pushed back to 2010. So this year we have to look forward to new albums from:

Erykah Badu, Sade, Usher, Jazmine Sullivan, Cassie, Ciara, Fantasia, The-Dream, Keri Hilson, Lloyd, Maxwell, Omarion, Kelis, Jamie Foxx, Beyonce, Brandy, Electrik Red, Goapale, Teedra Moses, Raheem DeVaughn, Monica, Trey Songz, Toni Braxton, Jennifer Hudson, Amy Winehouse, Estelle, Ne-Yo, Nina Sky, Kelly Rowland, Chrisina Milian

And the notable debuts:

Ester Dean
Kevin Cossom
Josiah Bell
RichGirl
K. Michelle
Janelle Monae
Shanell

What are you looking forward to? Which trends do you see emerging in r&b circa 2010? Which trends do you hope die out?

damn not that half of those are actually gonna get put out this year but looking forward to 2010! 2009 was alright for me, a few great records, handful of very good and then a dropoff, at least for me

This thread is sort of getting off to a slow start lol, but here are a few things I'm feeling at the moment.:

Cassie "Sky Diver"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PD2X_1crtM

I know you guys are probably tired of all of these Cassie leaks that never seem to lead to an actual album but this one is pretty amazing. Produced by Chris N' Teeb (who also did Ciara's "I'm On") and written by James Fauntleroy... has the surreal epicness that I've come to really love about Fauntleroy's writing (not to mention that beautiful melody), he's pretty much the best songwriter in the game right now IMO. His concepts and harmonies are so distinct, you can always tell when you're listening to something he wrote. Cassie is in top form here.. I try not to get my hopes up for Electro Love to ever drop since it's been like 3 years in the making but then I hear songs like this and get excited all over again.

Dirty Money "Hair Down"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25ovXU-MLZo

Between this and "Love Come Down" I'm oddly excited for the Dirty Money project, though Diddy is the worst part of both songs and I'd prefer if Dirty Money was just Dawn & Kalenna. This track, produced by Polow Da Don protege Hit Boy, really showcases why Dawn was the best part of Danity Kane - beautiful runs and harmonies.. you can really hear Brandy's influence here.

Mary J. Blige "Kitchen"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXM7ldB-Oto

So Mary's latest album Stronger with Each Tear has sort of been ignored, and while it isn't among her best work by any means there are some solid tracks on there, "Kitchen" probably being the standout (though "I Love U (Yes I Du)" with the Billy Paul "Circulate" sample is sick too). It's pretty much standard Terius, down to the stacatto toy piano and the ridiculous lyrics. Never let a girl cook in your KITCHENNNNNNNNN! Mary and Terius make a nice team, which you wouldn't think necessarily but this song and "Roses" from Growing Pains are classic Mary with a twist. Terius' quirkiness and sense of humor is a nice change of pace for Mary who can get a bit repetitive lyrically...

Alicia Keys "Love Is Blind"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDL2_qv4LPg

Alicia Keys is boring but she always has at least one great song on her albums and this is the one for me off of the latest one ("Try Sleeping..." is epic too, as well as "Unthinkable (I'm Ready)", not sure why they went with the godawful "Doesn't Mean Anything" as the first single but whatever). My problem with her is that she seems to play everything extremely safe, on this track she switched up her vocals a bit and there's some ENERGY and URGENCY in her singing for once.

Tamya Loren & Terius "Tipsy"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLNv_yFapEw

At first I wasn't feeling this one - I want L.O.S. to switch it up a bit now - but by the end of course I was singing along so I guess I like it now? Repetitive chours, radio killa/gorilla rhyme, AYYYYYYYYY, stacatto piano, Linn drums, are all here lol so if you're not tired of all that stuff yet you should love this!!

J*Davey has actually released something!
http://bandcamp.com/files/23/78/2378449203-1.jpg
It's another mixtape but at least it's all new shit. You can give it a listen and a free download here. Stand out tracks for me are "Get Together" and "Crawl All Over. It's really spacey, dubby.. it's actualy a lot more experimental and noodly then I expected from them, I figured they were headed in a poppier direction since they dropped that "Mama's Back" single last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN6yMF6cRC0

Also really feeling that Usher "Little Freak" record... and "In My Bag" with T.I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW4kvgZ2me4
There's a new Usher leak every day it seems and most of them are pretty damn good, so Raymond vs. Raymond should be a return to form for those who didn't like Here I Stand (though I still contend that Here I Stand is a great album! Don't sleep! I guess it's too grown and sexy for most lol)

Also lex spoke about it a bit in the '09 but that Lloyd EP is awesome. He is terribly consistent isn't he? At this point I'll buy anything Lloyd puts out, here's hoping his next album does better than Lessons in Love. This is my cut off of the Like Me EP:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GnbWxK59wU

epic post. gonna go through all these when i get home.

ditto - just want to reiterate how strong that lloyd ep is and yeah, "take it off" is my jam.

Omarion, "Temptation," 3:02-3:12.

that j*davey ep is really good, thx for the heads up brainwasher.

just got round to the robin thicke album - i really like it! weird, i was always kind of turned off by him before, but i LOVE his feather-lite vocals here.

really want to reiterate how great that lloyd ep is - gorgeous full-sounding production (looked it up and it seems it's by several different people, which i wouldn't have guessed), amazing melodies which just roll out with such confidence, really judicious use of hip-hop samples...lloyd is on top form too.

Another Usher leak:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yPHvHftYn4

Usher and Polow are on a roll

that lloyd ep is amazing. which of his albums is worth getting?

r&b heads don't forget to vote in the ilx poll!

dyao - i quite like both of lloyd's albums but tbh i don't recall either of them hitting me as hard and as immediately as this new ep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HciTQU8h-w

love this

that's good! think it's kinda old tho

Anybody hear the new Raheem Devaughan mixtape? I'm curious about it. He's also got a new official cd "Masterpeace" coming soon. According to this Chris Richards Washington Post interview he's gonna have some songs with Marvin Gaye/Curtis Mayfield style serious political lyrics-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/29/AR2010012900268.html

much as i loved Raheem's last album "Text Messages" and "Bulletproof" were so shitty that I can't really muster much interest in his new stuff

yeah, bulletproof is so heavily steeped in those influences, but so devoid of their depth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6hq_zeZGoo

seriously what has happened to Usher's career? this shit is depressing

"daddy's home" saddens me so much -- i've got 'confessions' in the car cd player right now - RIP

yeah my mind just boggles, like "Papers" was #1 on the R&B chart, you don't call that a teaser and not make a video unless you have something amazing in the chamber as the real single, instead it's some shit with Plies that even Plies didn't bother to show up to the video shoot for

no thoughts on the new janelle monae single?

what's the name?

http://pitchfork.com/forkcast/13883-tightrope-ft-big-boi/

i LIKE
i wish the beach house guys on the left hand side would quit going up and down and miming intercourse

i dont really like the new monae, too saadiq-does-motown ish

she wishes

i don't mind her blatant ripoffs as long as the end result is a good time

she opened for saadiq at some shows, I think

i'm almost positive she performed that when i saw her ~9 months ago. it's aight i guess

really like the new raheem devaughn single - nothing he'd done before had particularly grabbed me but this is very nice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMwNWoo3vpw

this is really nice -- what's it sampling tho? it's bothering me... (either that or the piano line & horns sound so classic that i can't believe they aren't sampled)

reminds me of a slicker version of 'take me higher' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfU0AM0-0I0 (KeAnthony, formerly Cruna)

ne-yo demoing an apparent future janet track - "rock with you"

http://www.zshare.net/download/72468852a9c393de

ne-yo demoing an apparent future janet track from two years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY7Qc_VMKmk

The Reverend (rev) wrote this on thread //////////////shawty got poll poll poll poll poll poll poll (part I: 2008 TRAX)\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ on board I Love Music on Feb 7, 2009

my tracks (ordered):

Juan Maclean, The - Happy House
Lil Wayne - A Milli
Erykah Badu - The Cell
Crazy Cousinz - Bongo Jam
Grind Mode - I'm So High
Hood Headlinaz F/ Jackie Chain & Jhi-Ali - Rollin'
Hercules & Love Affair - Blind (Frankie Knuckles Remix)
Janet Jackson - Rock With U
Young Jeezy Ft. Kanye West - Put On
Solange Knowles - I Decided Pt. 1
Hot Stylz F/ Yung Joc - Lookin' Boy
Enur Feat. Natasja - Calabria 2008
Jim Jones - Pop Champagne
Portishead - Machine Gun
Roots, The - 75 Bars (Black's Reconstruction)
Ne-Yo - Closer
Treasure Fingers - Cross The Dancefloor
Lloyd - Girls Around The World
Wiley - Wearing My Rolex
Jazmine Sullivan - Need U Bad

not really sure whether it sounds more or less completely totally gay with ne-yo singing it tbh

Usher mini-concert before the NBA Allstar game tonight was not impressive. "More" seems like he's been listening to power ballad singers and soundtracks to recent Disney things. Not a good look.

recent Usher is so u_u

Really? I like his stints on Fed Up and Spotlight and Little Freak a lot.

i can't tell if that's a selforksparody or not

u tell me.

i saw ne-yo live last night & he was awesome. sadly i missed ryan leslie due to, idk, not knowing what the time is or what time things start or minor details like that :( ne-yo was pretty awesome anyway.

anyway, ne-yo's valentine's day tips!!

what's not to like about little freak and want her body. they both good! granted what leaked as the raymond album is weak as hell but still!

Carolina Chocolate Drops cover "Hit Em Up Style"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKTXJUYiAT4

part of their regular set actually

dont u have a forks thread for this stuff yet

i kinda like "Want Her Body" but Usher doing a song with LA The Darkman kinda underlines the whole 'what the fuck is happening with his career' thing, it's like he's determined to collaborate with every half-famous bum rapper out right now.

deej dont u have a swag thread for your stuff yet

heh i quite liked that la the darkman cut just for the randomness tho, like if ursh is gonna underline his cluelessness then let it be a entertainingly squiggly line like that at least. (ignore all this if darkman is actually out there generating twitter mixtape heat or whatever these days.)

seems kinda weird to say it but usher is just too old/established in his virtues to be pulling off this young man hype shit again and make another 'yeah!' now. also slightly too much of a weirdo too - i think only other strange dudes who also happened to be recovering from a divorce from their moms were ever gonna feel the everyman realness of that 'papers' bullshit.

i mean i'm not saying dude has to aim at some maxwell/sade level now (not least cos that supposedly grown-up shit on here i stand was fucking terrible) but if he had any grace or self-awareness to throw some money and conviction into it there's a pretty wide expanse of middle ground he can quite easily inhabit, that the public (even *gasp* the kids) would happily follow him into - i'd have to check the record books but i think they used to call it r&b.

for a start how hard would it be to sweep up 14 of these 879 usher-ready cuts lying around gathering dust on ne-yo's mp3 blogleak cutting floor and give them a bit of hot producer slap n tickle? not very, i'm guessing. (remind me again what that particularly egregious one was that lex found tail end of last year?? that was pretty good.)

well yeah sure, mine would be the same. we are r&b fans after all.

obviously the issue of a "new thing" is a lot more nuanced than simply oppositionalizing cyborg auteur media shit vs organic 60s soul mom dinosaur stuff or whatever. as tim alludes to it's also to do with a healthy sense of self within a genre, and as it stands right now some old light from familiar stars don't make no constellation. like i wouldnt say dancehall broke any new ground this year but it was always in pretty rude bubbling conversation with itself - although i do realise this is something of an imperfect analogy.

should also make it clear also that i was originally only discussing future pointers in response to brainwasher's declaration and not using it as a stick to beat your bit. (though personally there's only so much "ciara returns to original values!" and "terius 'rewards his fans' with more of the same!" i can take it seems.)

come to think of it dancehall did also retreat to a awkward pseudo-90s after its period of giddy excess - i guess this is maybe what brainwasher was getting at in terms of r&b looking back, in order to redraw its own parameters and re-establish a collective consciousness or some sort. i still think this is a bit of a stretch however.

most great r&b albums this year seemed like flukes. so what?

― lex diamonds (lex pretend), Sunday, 26 December 2010 09:36 (2 hours ago)

not sure if i follow - in fact i suspect i strongly disagree. like i didnt mean fluke in general terms of "oh hey a good album wow" but in the sense of jazmine's same previously boring aesthetic coming together so entertainingly. far as memory serves that's not really something i can attribute to any other album this year.

cannot overstate how key 'love you long time' on that jazmine album is - it may be far from the best song qua song on there but it comes at the precise moment when, just as your suspension of disbelief starts to flag and you begin to tire of the retro kiss-chase, the thing grabs you by the lapels like NO, REALLY REALLY THOUGH

it definitely defines the album for me more than any other song, i think. it's just so exultant.

it's also to do with a healthy sense of self within a genre, and as it stands right now some old light from familiar stars don't make no constellation

lack of constellation doesn't mean the stars shine less brightly. idk i think this desire for a big, overarching narrative is exactly the excuse that rock crits have been using to ignore the genre post-timba/neps, so my answer to this nebulous "lack of sense of self" is still "so what?" - r&b isn't as localised a scene as dancehall or uk funky or whatever, so i don't think it's as dependent on that to satisfy - looking at its protagonists as individuals can be as rewarding as looking at their positions within the whole play.

it's not JUST old light, either - certainly there was much i found unexpected, if not actually "innovative" in the monáe sense, in r&b this year.

I agree with you lex, but... rock critics being into R&B at the beginning of the decade doesn't change how great that era was. It's not like timbaland/neptunes/rodney jerkins/etc. was some kind of indie critic conspiracy foisted on r&b and hip hop from the outside. It was really people who always focused on R&B who invented that narrative (albeit not the IDM comparisons) and rock critics latched on belatedly.

If anything the current state of R&B criticism focusing on artists rather than scene-narratives encourages lots of people - not just eternally-damned rock crits but even otherwise decent people - to divide the genre into auteurs/stars and others, to pay attention to The-Dream and Rihanna and Ciara but disregard all the inspired one-off singles that always make up 60% of what's great about R&B.

I see some of this in myself: I find it a lot harder to motivate myself to keep up with Keri Hilson, say, than it was to do likewise with, say, Christina Milian a few years back. I'll keep being invested in R&B regardless, but I wouldn't say no to a greater sense of excitement amongst listeners (R&B listeners) about the music generally.

yeah i do think prime timba/neps was a bit of a golden age obv, in terms of innovation as well - but there's no excuse for paid critics to drop the entire genre like they did when that ended.

i kind of feel that music across the board has gotten a lot more personality-driven, that you're a lot less likely to see random one-off singles (or if you do, they're because they flop and the trailed albums never emerge, eg richgirl). but idk, i don't really care about pandering to people's motivation - i think a lot of people expect hot r&b hitz to be delivered to them on a silver plate, and claim they have no time to go looking for them themselves, even as they go looking for music in all other genres. fuck 'em!

ummm lex don't fuck 'em, some of us work in jobs that aren't designed around hearing new r&b. hell, i'm currently working two jobs that aren't. i just don't have time to do anything other than read this thread and usually even then i get *months* behind on my bookmarks.

i get the righteous indignation that comes from having a toybox stocked with incredible playthings and everyone's all like "oh i don't play with those anymore". motherfucker, they're fun!

cannot overstate how key 'love you long time' on that jazmine album is - it may be far from the best song qua song on there but it comes at the precise moment when, just as your suspension of disbelief starts to flag and you begin to tire of the retro kiss-chase, the thing grabs you by the lapels like NO, REALLY REALLY THOUGH

― r|t|c, Sunday, December 26, 2010 7:26 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh absolutely, really felt the euphoria of that moment on my first listen of the album

wow @ this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxQj4Hs7v9E

reminds me of Surface "Happy" + Daydream-era Mariah.

WOAH WOAH WOAH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ys9zgnqzys

chase n. cashe is a dope producer

Drink my Pain Away is great!

yeah good looking on both of those bw, really feeling the keyshia

chase n. cache is one person?

say it out loud

ah

that always gets me in trouble

the cover of the keyshia album is abominable

song rocks tho

wait, Keyshia Cole released an album last week? i didn't even know she was, like, getting ready to drop an album or had a single out or anything.

yeah the single was a minaj feature that wasn't really very good at all

musta had to clean out a whole wig store to shoot the video for that

the minaj/cole single set up camp on 106 and park for the past month

aw man, I had no idea fantasia attempted suicide earlier this year :(

http://mp3waxx.com/jobfolders/lloydpattilabelle/blast-page.html

that is great, love the change he made to the chorus (instead of going for that high note when he says "HEAD" like in the OG, which was kind of grating as much as I like the song)

i kinda miss the yodel

that's dope and i din't care for the original version

i will pretty much rep for anything that uses "love, need, and want you"

yeah that incorporation is on point

this is great obv but i prefer the original, i love the og chorus, that shit just soars

can't really stand the og chorus tbh

yeh lloyd strains himself way too much on the og

cool rmx

original chorus is dope imo

can't find an mp3 of drink my pain away = i must be slippin

rip dirpy

seriously though, dirpy was a lifesaver all this year

been using some fallback services, but nothing so simple and workable.
anyways, just got it so

can you hook me up with the mp3? all the links I've found are dead :(

vote in my poll yall: best R&B radio hits of the year

i will pretty much rep for anything that uses "love, need, and want you"

― The Reverend, Thursday, December 30, 2010 4:24 PM (1 week ago)

i did not even recognize the sample in the og until right now!!!

the shame

I just realized what's so dope about "Bottoms Up" is that it's an R&B song that sounds like "O Let's Do It".

i don't hear any similarity at all between those songs

ditto; love bottoms up and hate o lets do it

hey forks did you get my email (sent awhile ago)?

i don't think so; regarding what? Wanna resend?

resent

thx!

hey what did y'all think of bilal's "airtight revenge" ?

there's some incredible things on that record.

Love that record, esp. "All Matter".

As far as "Bottoms Up" & "O Let's Do It". They both share similar a rhythmic thrust and sonic palette.