thread of miguel

I didn't know Frank Ocean had stans like that

you have no idea

Channel Orange sold about twice as much as Kaleidoscope Dream. Miguel is on the radio more but Frank has more diehards.

and a percentage of those Ocean fans revere him because he's admitted to same sex feelings thus is a hero and different from other R&B artists.

It's such a boring and arbitrary "feud" since I wouldn't even imagine either of them occupying the same lane musically. It's like comparing Trey Songz to The Weeknd.

this feud is infuriatingly reductive and everyone blaming miguel for stoking it should have an issue with the reporter who asked the question in the first place

(also i find frank ocean's thing pretty snoozy tbh.)

but like why does the media have to set up a FITE between two artists of color who are defying boundaries? it's almost as if their minds are B L O W N by the idea that two non-cishet white bros can balance artistic and commercial success without canceling each other out!

(also as meaghan garvey pointed out this whole thing leaves out dawn richard, who is also on their level, but maybe these unimaginative writers can only engage in one othering act at a time)

Yeah, way too many outlets reporting on this feud whose R&B music coverage is otherwise lacking or nonexistent.

i am glad my reading doesn't take me to any place where such a "feud" is happening

dawn put out a better album than either of these guys tbh

dawn put out a better album than either of these guys tbh

― like a giraffe of nah (forksclovetofu)

yeah

Well, and once again, it doesn't occur to critics that they can compare male artists to female ones.

Despite numerous efforts and liking a few songs on various EPs of hers, I still find Dawn largely impenetrable, but agree with the sentiment that there's plenty of other interesting things going on in the genre that don't get talked about whole folks bicker back and forth about Miguel versus Frank.

But maybe this is all more suited to the general R&B thread.

after "what's normal anyway" this album is perfect

to me the big separator b/w this and KD is that KD kinda loses its plot halfway through. the songs individually are pretty good but there's nothing really unifying them, and the album kinda just peters out

this one ends so strongly that when i'm done w/ it i'm just like "damn"

I like the quiet no frills opener but "DEAL" and "The Valley" are still slogs. "NWA" is OK. The rest is gravy. "face the sun" makes me feel happy all over.

yeah i'd agree with that - i relistened to KD the other day and had completely forgotten how front-loaded it is (but, as you say, not because the songs in the back half are bad per se)

"what's normal anyway" seems anomalous but i'm thinking it might be the heart of the album in some ways? if the first half of the album is the roleplay to the back half's pure feeling (obv only in a rough sense, not song-by-song accurate)

xp

I was surprised to learn that "what's normal anyway" wasn't a solo composition.

damn i hadn't even looked at the credits yet -- are the wikipedia ones right? benny blanco & cashmere cat worked on "...goingtohell" ??? so random

also, "flesh" is miguel, raphael saadiq and.... jai paul's brother?

The Thrill -> How Many Drinks -> Where's The Fun -> Arch & Point flows perfectly, I have no truck with this historical revisionism. Especially given there have been literally hundreds of more brazenly front loaded albums in recent years.

It does look worse up against the near flawless back half of the new one, admittedly, but I still rate KD slightly higher overall.

Is Miguel trying to tell us something on What's Normal Anyway?

Wiki credits are wrong.

Jai Paul's bro is on Flesh though right

this feud is infuriatingly reductive and everyone blaming miguel for stoking it should have an issue with the reporter who asked the question in the first place

― maura, Wednesday, July 8, 2015 11:11 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, Miguel and Frank happened to be in the same room for the first time in 2 years the day the interview took place, maybe the writer would've pushed that angle if that wasn't the case but we'll never know. and while i prefer Miguel musically, he really just has never taken the high road in this stuff. he actually said that Frank coming out “could have been a marketing ploy" in a radio interview, the whole subject of FO just seems to make him talk like a jackass.

him making a point of being all "I want people to know who I am and that I love women!" when announcing this album reads a bit differently to me now

http://i.imgur.com/rC7Ox4z.jpg

:D

him making a point of being all "I want people to know who I am and that I love women!" when announcing this album reads a bit differently to me now

oh come onnnnn

liking this album a lot more since I deleted "The Valley" and "gfg"

i mean, this is something Miguel has been asked about, and has responded to, since the beginning of his career. this is from a year before Channel Orange:
http://necolebitchie.com/2011/06/miguel-addresses-his-sexuality-i-love-women/

there are gay rumors about every (and i mean EVERY) successful male R&B singer but Miguel is one of the few where it became an overt component of his interviews/career narrative right off the bat without any real basis for it

I like frank ocean but I don't want to fuck to it. Point miguel.

^

lol at the idea of anyone who posts to a message board making decisions about music based on their sex lives

speak for yourself?

anyway, you can totally have sex to frank ocean if that's really your criteria

(also as meaghan garvey pointed out this whole thing leaves out dawn richard, who is also on their level, but maybe these unimaginative writers can only engage in one othering act at a time)

― maura, Wednesday, 8 July 2015 15:19 (Yesterday) Permalink

Brainwasher pointed out jazmine Sullivan's album is continually left out in these things (and maybe a more populist/popular example than DR)

I want to like JS more but every time I listen to her I'm just kind of like "smart songwriting" but nothing else draws me in.

anyway, you can totally have sex to frank ocean if that's really your criteria

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, July 8, 2015 9:40 PM Bookmark

I guess, but his music (and he himself) are kind of weirdly unsexy to me.

what is this "music to have sex to" thing?

i am disgusted that any of you people are having sex

srsly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ImRyPymRAM

I think we can all agree that sex is weird and gross

this album on the other hand just seems to get better every time I hear it, and I really don't get complaints about the sequencing

I feel like you guys are just grasping at "people we also like" straws to bring up Dawn or Jazmine as supposedly obvious female contemporaries of Miguel/Frank when Tinashe and Janelle Monae and Jhene Aiko are a much better fit

what if ~they're all different~

They're all very different! I just think "why bring up Frank Ocean and not Dawn Richard" sounds disingenuous or like you expect every writer to conform to your not very widely shared view of the R&B landscape

Disingenuous more so because it skirts around the reasons why gender still plays a disproportionate role in determining how we evaluate singers (or artists in general).

I think Tinashe is a good fit!