Rolling R&B Thread 2008

I'm in. Sounds fun.

so is the J-Hud album still a thing? it seems like she or someone really dropped the ball by not releasing that, like, a year ago.

finally got the Amerie album, which is pretty good, but I guess that has no chance of getting a full U.S. release in '08 at this point, does it (wiki says it was released in...Wal-Mart only?).

Yrah, reportedly Clive Davis scrapped the album she recorded before because it was "too Broadway". They really did drop the ball with this release, J-Hud hype is pretty much dead now - but she does have a few big movies coming out next year - Sex In the City and Winged Creatures, so that'll probably create a bit of buzz. I do wonder what direction they're trying to make her go in - the reported first single is called "Pocketbook", produced by Timbaland and featues Ludacris.. I just can't see that working for her. Just Blaze said that he did a few tracks for her in the "Usher - Throwback" vein, very excited to hear those.

And I have no idea what's going on with Amerie's record, I heard she was scrapping a US release and re-recording, then I heard that she's releasing a remix of "Crush" over here as the first (fourth!) single... who knows.

Yeah considering that Hudson was practically the most popular black entertainer in the world for a few fleeting months there, they really lost that momentum. I mean, I barely remember anything about that Jamie Foxx album, but it was released less than a year after his Oscar win and went double platinum. They could've just had her do a couple singles with Ne-Yo/Stargate and pushed out the album, and it probably would've been huge whether or not the rest was "too Broadway."

stargate did a good job on that new johnta austin as it goes; his album may or may not end up worth the wait. also looking forward to cheri dennis, tiffany evans and solange. i-15 too if zone 4 push the boat out. scherzinger looks to be doomed. am ready to pounce on lazy hilson boosterism. so ready.

read some stuff about the usual big name producers being all over cassie's album - BODES BAD. maybe we will get a ryan leslie solo out of it, but wemarkable pwoduction aside the guy has not been much of a vehicle for anything thus far so i dunno.

anyone else been straining to form an opinion on that usher/polow snippet that's about? can't seem to resist these kinda fools errands :(

Yeah, that clip is such poor quality that I can't really tell. Sounds nice enough, but it doesn't sound like a record-breaking smash or anything... is it supposed to be the first single or is he doing the "two singles at once" thing (the other one being "Dat Girl Right There").

Nicole Scherzinger's project is hilarious, I think it may be the biggest flop ever in the history of music.

And yes, Tiffany Evans' album should be awesome. "I'm Grown"!!!

ohhh yeah, Johnta Austin, another one caught in perpetual label purgatory. I really liked "Turn It Up," not so much the follow-up w/ Fabo (or was it Unk?), and so there's a newer Stargate one I should hear? didn't know about Usher/Polow, was still holding out hope that the weird song w/ Luda would take off.

Usher/Polow/Dream - "Make Love In the Club" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18llUN7XfDk

usher/polow has the makings of something i think! beat seems nothing special but i like the way usher comes at the verses. no point in studying it overmuch though. and i still can't fathom how the luda's gonna get me, but these things happen unfortunately.

aaaaaanyway:

'i'm grown' - NO GOOD.

soulja girl collipark remix - RIDICULOUSLY GOOD, ZOMG.

can you be more RONG, "I'm Grown" is the shit. "I'm bringin' things to life like I'm Geppetto!"

Soulja Girl rmx is hot tho.

http://a802.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/10/l_8b3fbb04c1b4185175a51aae2635cb81.gifhttp://a802.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/10/l_8b3fbb04c1b4185175a51aae2635cb81.gifhttp://a802.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/10/l_8b3fbb04c1b4185175a51aae2635cb81.gif

the gif that keeps on etc

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f14/snouts/ryanlezza.gif

ew remember when r-les thought he was this precious? wheeeeee!

anyways can the soulja girl rmx get some more love from you suckaz, or what

we on the phone like da da da da da daaaaaa daaaaaa

cos otherwise i will have to flood the thread with DANGEROUSLY CUTTING EDGE NEW MUSIC, run for yr lives

is that dear jayne 'rain' thing actually getting big then? amazingly useless song.

u know, what is happening with rain? it's definitely experiencing a rebirth as a dramatic symbol

random, untenable, i like it! more examples plz

more examples of rain? i dunno there are like 5 songs on the new mary j that she's singin about rain, and of course the production o nthe album reminds me of Umbrella, so it started this thought process

so now when would you say rain was at its lowest ebb, creatively

could do like a pamphlet on candy-kiddy rnb writers (like the-dream, the monolithic critical generational gap for whom still kinda bothers me) revogueing the old universal elementalisms and such like

i am THIS bored

cos otherwise i will have to flood the thread with DANGEROUSLY CUTTING EDGE NEW MUSIC, run for yr lives

LOL. She totally looks like MC Lyte, it's uncanny.

I have been playing that song a lot recently though even though it's trés bland and unecessary it's catchy.

dear jayne "rain" is great too.

haha r|t|c i like ur line of questioning i feel like i'm in school again =P

I have been playing that song a lot recently though even though it's trés bland and unecessary it's catchy.

haha i know right! i feel so pathetic when i put it on.

also when i hear her sing "whyyy? whyyy? just tell em that it's human nature" and the sample comes in it's like bitch don't take the piss!!

surprised she didnt go the whole hog and slowdance the video with the son of mc skat kat

ok finally got around to the "Soulja Girl" remix, it is pretty great. reminds me of the awesome Collipark remix of "Slow Jamz," also good to hear him do something worthwhile in too long, since he seems to be very behind the scenes w/ his new signings, got completely overshadowed by Phunk Dawg on the production for the Hurricane Christ album.

Paula Campbell came up briefly on the 2007 thread (short story: from Baltimore, had some big local hits in '03-'04, signed to Sony and hooked up with Ne-Yo's production company and had a video directed by Ciara but as yet has gone nowhere commercially) -- her MySpace page has a couple new Clutch-penned songs, "Hitlist" and "Upkeep." not sure if one or the other is officially a single yet, kinda liking the latter but the former is marred by a silly radio edit (where she pronounces "f'd up" literally like "effed up"): http://www.myspace.com/paulacampbell

Hurricane Christ

o_O at my own typo there

uhh "effed up" is a term, that people use! i don't think that's a radio edit dude.

what is up with a video for this old rashad ditty all of a sudden? getting a rerelease? glad he might be getting another push anyway, i think he's excellent.

i like how they've made it look like a generic summertime banger when the song itself is all cynical evil hypnosis

i know people say "effed up," but it still sounds silly as hell in a straightforward R&B song, and i'm just assuming (hoping) there is a dirty version where she says the actual word.

it does seem like a clutchy thing to sing.

mmmmmmmm, listen to rashad's other songs

http://www.myspace.com/grandhustlerashad

the guy is class

if you liked 'way it is', check more

if you liked 'detroit love affair', check just lay

(i know i put up 'just lay' last year when pixelcloudz was a thing but it got no response - still think it's amazing, so whatever)

am looking forward to the mariah / t-pain single a whole lot more since i read it was gonna be called MIGRATE!!

thinking it will have be a "my anatomy is birdlike" line for 2008 maybe

lol @ Hurricane Christ.

what do you dudes think of the new trey songz song?? i hear it on the radio all the time now. i think it's pretty good. too bad they released it in the dead of winter. i thought it was a ne-yo song.

yeah, i can't be bothered to resist it. i saw some video last week where trey fucked a dude up akon-style in the middle of performing it, of all songs

god i even quite like that chris brown "hearts all over the world tonight" tune as well

fuck you stargate!!

we talked about "Can't Help But Wait" a bit in the 2007 thread, or is there a newer Trey Songz single that's being referred to right now? i think Stargate is still dead to me, "Tattoo" is the only thing they've done in like a year that I've enjoyed even a little bit and even that one I can't quite take seriously.

rtc I'd never heard Rashad before - "More" in particular is great. "Just Lay" is that genteel shit that would become my secret third favourite track on the album after six months, but I suspect it will struggle in a contextless iTunes wasteland.

The "Soulja Girl" remix is excellent.

yeah i was talking about "can't help but wait". i hadn't heard it up until last week or so. i liked the original "soulja girl"

i don't know why but you don't LOOK like someone who would be into pop/rNb, jordan... ::shrugs::

the r&b i listen to is really usually stuff that crosses over to pop radio, and i can't remember the last time i actually listened to an r&b album (i.e. "be without you" was one of my fave singles of 05 but i never heard the album [not sure why that is]).

i look like a typical indie kid, and my favorite albums are usually pretty much crit-loved indie (lcd, jens, for isntance this year) but i listen to pop radio all the time and for the past 2-3 years have started listening to pop albums.

have ppl listened to the-dream album? i like it a lot but don't love it. a bunch of really dynamite songs on there though. "falsetto" should be blowing up right now, but idk why it's not (radio can't handle a dude doing a female orgasm??). i saw that love/hate was #1 on the julliane shepherd list that rtc linked to in 07 year end list thread.

As I said in the last thread, Trey Songz already made girly sex noises on Twista's "Girl Tonite" and that was a pretty big hit. Maybe the problem with "Falsetto" is that it's unlistenably awful, y'know, just a theory.

ah. just posted on rolling charts that you should listen to Mary's new album, but if you don't do albums, you don't do albums!

you do look like a typical indie kid! haha =P but i guess a typical indie kid wouldn't be talking about Be Without You like that.

(i'm assuming you meant to post this here and not in charts thread)

jordan you should hear some of the other mary j songs on that album that are even better than Just Fine.

the thin thing --> not too much synth on a lot of tracks, but the beats/bass is not thin at ALL. really packs a huge punch.

-- Surmounter, Thursday, January 3, 2008 10:52 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

yeah i think im going to pick up that mary j soon. i really love it when she unleashes her voice but obviously that wouldn't really work on a track that's supposed to be so care-free and steady and even keel.

i actually posted it there cuz you were talkin bout Just Fine there methinks

omgosh you have no idea though, she definitely unleashes elsewhere on the record, and even the slinky/steady tracks are KILLER

secret third favourite albums songs after 6 months are usually the best, are they not?

think i basically said this on the 07 thread, but what i mainly like about rashad is just his potential as a credible male singer type figure finally, one not necessarily beholden to being a puppet for writers and beats and so on, who is masterful with the slow jams. also the thing about him as an extension of the ti persona(s); almost every artist on grand hustle has had a facet or other at play, so like young dro the jumper-wearing colourswatch weirdo, boosie the tear the club up thug yammerer, and rashad perhaps the slyly persuasive loverman. (he looks pretty average and round-the-way in the video though, so really i doubt that's how it will play out.) basically i'm hoping ti masterminds an attack of the clones from the comfort of his couch this year, if he isn't too busy helping out with tiny's travel xscapes that is (lolololol CLASSIC)

o fuck boosie isnt on grand hustle is he, i meant lil yola. same fucking guy anyway!

"secret third favourite albums songs after 6 months are usually the best, are they not?"

yeah totally! it's a teedra kinda point to make.

jordan there was loads of dream talk on the 07 thread, and yeah i can defend the guy on a lot of things but certainly not 'falsetto'

aye i will read 07 thread so i can stop bringing up stuff you guys already talked about. anyway i love the shit out of "fast car", probably the most show-stopping hook on the album and i hope he releases it as a single tho i doubt it will do anything if rihanna's post-"umbrella" car-as-sex song didn't even get into the top 10.

the failure of one clichéd sex metaphor will never slow down the avalanche of similiar ones, especially as long as R. Kelly is a free man.

Oh, as if that isn't the most time-proven sex metaphor ever.

funny the opening seconds of that soulja girl remix made me sink a little, already wearied, in my chair. but then, wow.

Andy gives Mario's new album a 4-star review on allmusic guide.

good thread already

mario's album is a bit like when they eat that teleported steak in the fly - tastes funny how? "funny synthetic". unlike geena you do perversely kinda want to finish it off though, cos a teleported steak is cooler than just a bad one.

luckily enough, positive k's review is not dissimilar.

so, had a pleasant afternoon with the dream album - think the key to embracing it maybe is just to embrace its failures (WELL DUH THANKS!!); rather than hearing spouted-off drivel from a (surprisingly old) hack who got lucky, who you cringingly suspect might actually somehow be living the life he's on about, think of him as a random bedroom loner only fantasising what it might all be like - the girls, clubs, cars and most importantly, how HE'S GONNA SHOW EVERYONE, THEY'LL SHE'LL SEE. (ie. the clue is in the name.) cos marrying an escapism to the kitchensink banality i mentioned before (kind of a escapism TO banality even maybe, is that an idea or did i just headtop myself?) manages to cutesy up the countless cadges of r kelly and prince and other fearless heroes a little, to soften the vanity of all those ella's echoing round his own brain, even manages to turn sodding 'falsetto' into this wonderful high fever of hairbrush-in-front-of-the-mirror, irror, irror karaoke sillyness. (still a terrible single but nm.)

whether this sympathy-via-thwarting is classic hollow teenpopstyle self-deception artifice, or indeed classic rockist recidivist strategem #4 (ha what the diff right) i don't know, but it worked for me today.

anyway, missed this swizz & cassidy mix of bow wow & omarion last month - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmFLc1PmQS0 - think it to be a fine caper.

"whether this sympathy-via-thwarting is classic hollow teenpopstyle self-deception artifice, or indeed classic rockist recidivist strategem #4 (ha what the diff right)"

klasik

Still listening to that screwed and chopped version of "Falsetto" more than anything else actually by Dream - it's like the "Pony" remix innit. I should check out the other DJ Black Boi efforts, he's uploaded them all onto Facebook, the cad.

anyway, missed this swizz & cassidy mix of bow wow & omarion last month - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmFLc1PmQS0 - think it to be a fine caper.

-- r|t|c, Sunday, January 6, 2008 7:49 PM (3 hours ago)

yeah i'm surprised it's been out that long too, just heard it on the radio like 2 days ago for the first time. but there the date added is on the youtube link, no arguing with that. definitely takes what little was good about the original and combines it with something at least slightly better. that new Bow & O single though, the "Goin' Back To Cali" jack, big WTF there.

xpost UGH wtf are you talking about lol. it just sounds good GEESH.

shut it you claff!! tugging at my coat like i was kogan! are you seriously trying to tell me that when you hear thedream you just hear a regular stand-up guy you have no issue with

haha i think ima have to download this bw & o album, omarion all looking like the lovechild of bonecrusher and diana ross in the video for that new one is just too good

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l302/thehottestmess/messesgalore/51101411ahotmessblog12112007122753P.jpg

atten-CHUUUUN

O_O

Destroy: hiphop fashion c. 2008

rev wears throwbacks?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTm5dj7qTmA

that's "don't wanna fight" by qwote (?) and trina. i hear it on the radio at least 2-3 times a day now. pretty good by pop radio crossover r&b standards and is kinda on that shuffly ne-yo vibe but a little more melodramatic. dude's gotta a decent voice and the verses are pretty good. trina's verse sucks major tho.

xp: hahaha no, never did

Cheri Dennis, on the Bad Boy train for almost a decade now and still releasing a doomed "first single" every now and again, this time dragging Gorilla Zoe along for the ride:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDCCYkS_YAo

just saw a flyer for a Teedra Moses show at an indie rock club in D.C., good for her I guess for grinding by any means necessary.

The album is already out on iTunes, it has been for a few months now. I like her.

cor how did i miss that, been looking forward to that record for ages. any good?

knew i shouldve subscribed to the badboy blog.

anyway, 'portrait of love' is ace - 'i love you' acer still. (best ever ryan leslie production? no, but i do enjoy claiming so.) would that everyone's doomed first singles were so good.

someone stop me from doing a "best song on jagged little thrill" zing poll

don't do it! noone needs to see "Where The Party At" in a landslide victory over that weepy ballad with Barry Pepper in the video.

b-but the ludacris cut!! sigh.

i know when things have changed a lot
cos now when women go out, they be on the prowl harder than men
i know when i figured it out
when this girl walked up
she said cut something, somethiiiing?!?!!
ain't like i'm trippin about it
i just remember when a man could be a man, baby
i still!!
can't
believe!!
what
she
saiiiid!!!!

first impression of the cheri album is "novel way of flogging 10 years of demos THANKS A LOT RADIOHEAD" but i like her voice a fair bit and trust her songwriting steez so maybe it's a maybe

kinda kelly rowland vibe to it as well

new insano blogpost from solange, hurrah

she is a card

"a market that aims to force a juvenile regression of R&B music"

Angela Johnson is part of a coterie of new soul rebels who thrive outside of a market that aims to force a juvenile regression of R&B music. Along with contemporaries like Julie Dexter and Donnie, Johnson makes music for young adults whose parents kept Anita Baker and Luther Vandross on regular rotation in the house. Johnson's work with Tortured Soul drummer Christian Ulrich as part of Cooly's Hot Box still has a strong cult following. She's kept her creative chops sharp with her own solo releases as well as collaborations with DJ Spinna and Atlanta's nouveau disco troupe Seek. Johnson and her band take the stage of the Birchmere tonight with powerful and popular rising star Eric Roberson. A wash post.com writer http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/09/AR2008010902590.html

hey curmudge do you not maybe think you yourself might be the kind of person best placed to address a topic like that? normally i wouldn't suggest it but then uhh you did happen to send me your cv that time.

hella disingenuous thing of me to say given that i was just thinking about how it is i've kinda really come round to that cheri dennis record on a 90s recherche grab-bag tip but still eh

also that spinna mix of cooly's hot box 'make me happy' = classic lost summerjam!! flipped the 'seventh heaven' beat to saucy effect

The guy who wrote that piece also takes shots at chart-topping rap while nostalgically plugging native tongue era stuff, and throwback stuff like Little Brother. So his arguments seem a little simplistic to me. I'm also skeptical because well, Anita Baker and Luther Vandross, aren't as high on my list of faves as numerous soul artists from the 50s through the 70s or Mary J. Blige and others from today. Although I'd be curious to see him try to flesh it out if he could-- His take on what the market can do though may be slanted by the fact that he's also writing in a DC environment where the "quiet storm" mellow r'n'b radio format was first established, Jill Scott can pack a 4,000 seat hall multiple nights, and there are lots of Howard U kids into a post-Donnie Hathaway neo-soul thing. I've got my issues with some of today's r'n'b, but musically at least, I'll take the "juvenile" stuff over the polished retro stuff. Although I do not know the youngish DC folks he's been bigging up--I need to find time to check out Roberson, W. E. Felton and others. Maybe they combine 'juvenile' swagger, passion and innovation with 'mature' knowledge and skill.

I can't imagine quiet storm ever sold to the kids.

curmudgeon is right that classy/grown folks R&B is a huuuge marketplace in D.C. though, probably about as popular there with teens as it can be anywhere.

yeah i was about to say that i buy the idea that dc has a slightly olderminded youth culture but couldnt really pinpoint why i would be getting that impression from over here. rich harrison and breakbeats i suppose, predictably.

good post curmudgeon man!

But DC also has the younger skewing go-go and rap audience, and old-time Chocolate City P-Funksters.

I'd stereotype and say the classy r'n'b's a mostly African-American college girl and up thing, but I know a local 42 year-old white suburbanite guy who was into Luther and quiet storm stuff in his high school and college days.

Also, the 'grown folks' thing seems to be playing out several ways--you got your 45 and up older grown folks into chitlin circuit soul and your your slightly younger grown folks into the other classy r'n'b stuff.

Chicago also has a large "dusty soul" audience, the source of a lot of Kanye chipmunkery.

sorry to briefly derail but had to go download that cooly's / spinna again, here it is for our sins

http://www.zshare.net/audio/64161759a954dd/

(weirdly, hearing it now it strikes me as english as tuppence, in a completely untransmittable way)

(also forgot it featured rapps by JIGMASTAS haha)

yeah I don't know about Chicago but here's how I'd rank Northeast cities on a scale of "quiet storm" to "Scream Tour": D.C. -> Philly -> New York -> Baltimore (xpost)

more young vs old: "a subtly aggressive attempt at attaining further commercial appeal", andy k he say of the new raheem devaughn record. hearing the single 'customer' was actually what made me go back into the the-dream album; super tedious overextended metaphor (roughly about as profound as yung joc 'coffee shop' or something, if not less so) = oldster gripes being usually to do more with how the kids comport themselves sans integrity rather than any actual factual content issues shocker. (obv that applies way less to a renegade politico dude like donnie for instance, but still.)

I was suspicious of Raheem Devaughn and his air-seeping-out-of-a-tire vocal tone at first, but a lot of his records slowly grew on me, definitely a big part of D.C.'s young folks sounding like grown folks atmosphere but also was early on the whole R&B mixtape bandwagon of doing new tracks over popular beats (and fwiw he's been flogging the whole “R&B Hippie Neo Soul Rock Star” angle since the first album came out too). "Woman" has been the big record around here lately, don't think I've even heard "Customer," i should probably check the album out.

how would you say 'cupid shuffle's appeal broke down demographically last year?

Good question, as for the answer hmmmmmm. Maybe Al knows.

“Mary J. Blige has never taken any performance-enhancing illegal steroids,” the singer’s spokeswoman Karynne Tencer told the Daily News.

no idea here re: "Cupid Shuffle." I heard the song maybe twice and didn't feel compelled to hear it a third time. I guess it was kinda clean fun for the whole family, though?

It was big in the South as far as I can tell. At a bar mitzvah I went to a short while back they stuck to its predecessor "The cha-cha slide," so I guess "Cupid" did not crossover. Wikepedia says "Cupid Shuffle" was featured in that New Orleans based tv show K-Ville.

(and fwiw he's been flogging the whole “R&B Hippie Neo Soul Rock Star” angle since the first album came out too)

Bah, figures. Couldn't recall any references to that on the first album.

yeah don't know if he ever said it in a song but definitely in interviews and radio drops and things like that, for a while now.

Roped in by Love/Hate (to hell with it) -- "Falsetto," even (in an amused Slow Jams/Pony/Soul Glo way). Favorite track might be the Rihanna feature, but Purple Kisses, Playin' in Her Hair, and are all in the running. If he makes a second album he might ruin it.

and I forgot what else, obv.

how would you say 'cupid shuffle's appeal broke down demographically last year?

-- r|t|c, Sunday, 13 January 2008 22:01 (3 days ago) Link

'fun for the whole family' (african american edition)

chicago has a huuuuge grown folks r&b thing.

i have trouble believing that you guys know that many people in their mid 20s and older who are rocking the dream's album. I'm not saying i wouldn't do so ... i'm not some pro-SERIOUS R&B dude or anything but the legacy of luther + anita is just as significant as that of new edition & boys II men (or more so really, because there was only one luther etc, kind of the way the whole myth of 'grown folks r&b' is constructed). While I find that kind of anti-'the kids' stuff corny i do find something disheartening about the idea of listening solely to male singers who are kind of softened up for teen audiences ... i just get the feeling that i'm supposed to find these guys 'pretty' and its weird. you look at R&B singers from the 70s, the back cover of the album to the Dramatics' debut and the dudes could pass for ex-cons. I guess rap has kind of stolen up the rugged masculinity thing.

with women in the younger-tilting R&B base there's less of an issue

anyway i'm not sure what my overall point is ... was the generation gap in R&B ever so pronounced?

and lets be real, Mary J. is really 'grown folks' at this point anyway

mariah dominated two summers ago maybe cuz she bridged the gap???

so funny! i was thinkng today, i wish i could do some kind of survey -- what age group buys mary? but the thing is, she sounds incredibly vibrant to me, i mean, i think if she is "grown folks," the "young folks" are missing out on something.

mariah, it's weird, she has a young vibe, even tho she's no teeny bopper.

it's funny cuz Grown Woman is like one of the best songs on the new mary

deej... translate pls.

Okay, so I've barely been paying attention to r&b for the past half a year or so, at least beyond what I hear on the radio, which lately I haven't even been listening to much. What am I missing?

a few good albums from last year:

jill scott - the real thing
j holiday - back of my lac
eric roberson - left
chrisette michele - i am
keyshia cole - just like you
the-dream - love/hate
carl thomas - so much better
alicia keys - as i am (well, the whole thing isn't good but there are some gems on it)

Yeah the Alicia album is wildly uneven but the ones I like are pretty great. Amerie and T-Pain and Keyshia were good, too, and Kelly Rowland was ehhh, although as usual I feel guilty for loving a ton of R&B singles but only checking for a handful of albums.

Really liking the Raheem Devaughn so far.

although as usual I feel guilty for loving a ton of R&B singles but only checking for a handful of albums.

Yeah, this is kind of where I'm at right now, but I used to be better about it than I am right now. I've heard the Amerie & T-Pain albums, (love the former, am of two minds about the latter) but those two, and unless I'm forgetting something, the Ne-Yo & Rihanna albums are the only 2007 r&b albums I've heard.

Oh, the Jannelle Monae EP, I suppose.

Oh I'm forgetting retro-soul stuff like Amy Winehouse and Sharon Jones. There's a bit of a disconnect there. I forget to include them.

It's weird that John Legend is now releasing his 5th video of an album that didn't really have any big hits and was released well over a year ago, this time the one with the very deliberate Jeff Buckley impression. Good album, though, interested to see what he does with the next one.

That album floors me every time I listen to it (still pretty frequently!).

legend is doing mad press lately

my mom loves him and everytime he is on tv she tells me and he's been on today show/elle degeneres type shows like crazy the past few weeks

I saw him this fall and he is a tremendous showman. I'm still mad at myself for missing the beginning of his set.

yeah my brother/mom saw him on that tour and still rave about it

hmmm...seems like Once Again has quietly sold 1.6 mil. That's big numbers these days.

deej... translate pls.

-- The Brainwasher, Wednesday, January 16, 2008 10:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

talked about chicago ... so many diff kinds of R&B fans here its pretty whoa ... everything from grown folks steppin music to the R&B singer-oriented house music to the rather popular local hero peven everett to the pop R&B/hip-hop stations to the folks big into robin thicke and john legend, the headwrap crowd, etc etc etc

i dunno i was drinking but i think it made sense. i was confused about the general apprehension towards 'grown folks r&b' which i don't think is the same thing per se as corny 'going back to the way things were' shit and i was also confused how a bunch of dudes in their mid-20s didnt know R&B fans who weren't so into chris brown but knew who rahsaan patterson is or listen to dwele or robin thicke or anthony hamilton or john legend ... artists who i range 'indifference' to 'cool' to 'whoa!' on, depending on the artist, song and album

then sorta looking @ the generation divide, like when do yr chris brown fans become yr slightly more adult soul fans? and speculating that mariah sorta bridged that divide, and that mary j blige is more in the vein of a luther or anita than 'regular' r&b.

also wondering about the pretty-boy-ness of most scream tour-targeted R&B

observing that the rugged folks have mostly gone to the rap side

Who was the last big rugged male R&B star not including R Kelly? Sisqo? Am I forgetting someone obvious?

maybe
http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/152/878~Jaheim-Posters.jpg

haha of course

last dude to wear batters gloves while rapping/singing i remember is Treach from nbn

oh i guess t.i. in the hurt video but it looked like he was going for a treach thing there anyway

anyway i'm not sure what my overall point is ... was the generation gap in R&B ever so pronounced?

-- deej, Wednesday, January 16, 2008 11:57 PM (Yesterday)

Nelson George who used to write for the Voice back in the day, and wrote a P& J essay or two (and now just mostly does screenplays and such), has written about this in one of his books I believe (I have a vague recollection of him doing so let's say). I think he was once trying to make the point that in many African-American families there was less of a difference between what kids listened to and what their parents listened to, than in standard white American families with kids listening to rock and parents to other stuff. I need to dig up what he said.

In cities like Chicago and DC the various different r'n'b crowds are pretty obvious. Is the balkanization of corporate radio and video channels to blame partially for the apprehension toward grown folks r'n'b?

well ne-yo's not exactly rugged but he does operate in between the poles somewhat; 'so sick' you could say was candyfloss (RONGly duh) and then after that he's been getting his grown & sexy on. you could almost say he was the older flipside to chris brown same michael jackson rehash.

you could also say neyo is camp as a motherfucker but nm!! i mean i know sisqo and them were flamboyant in their day but really now, that cowboy hat is a bit extra

I think there's plenty of dudes in current R&B who try to come off kinda rugged and street with varying levels of success (Trey Songz, fuckin' Tyrese doing a rap album as "Black Ty"), and Akon at least early on worked the whole ex-con angle so hard that to this day a lot of media outlets mistake him for a rapper. I also get the feeling at least a couple of the guys in Jagged Edge could be some scary motherfuckers, but they're kinda holdovers from 90's R&B just like R. Kelly is, back when he and Jodeci were really just starting to make R&B seem vaguely dangerous and thuggish. But yeah, for the most part current R&B radio is defined by skinny twinkletoes teenagers like Chris Brown and Omarion who think they're badass the moment they can grow a little facial hair.

The photo spreads in the Chris Brown albums are hilarious.

Dave Hollister, at least with his first couple albums, sorta straddled young/grown as a hard dude (now he's with Gospo Centric).

i should say that my beef with any generation gap upthread was mainly to do with a critical one - ie the dream album being uselessly landlocked between "yay, you hate fun" and "boo, i hate 'fun'" deathsquads with zero breakdown.

fundamentally though arent these questions all just symptoms of the old "teenagism cutting into the 20s and 30somethings not growing up as fast" cliche thing? not to overstate but guys are not guys like they used to be, and that applies to most musics - rnb, dancehall (quickwitted popculture wiseguys playing gangsta still getting effortlessly bodied whenever capleton or buju touches mic), i mean fuck, deej if you seriously think rap is full of rugged dudes right now - not just referring to ringtone kids either - i really don't know what to say. you mention ti and he's exactly the sort of prettyboy who's hoovered up the male rnb space; hardly kool g rap now is he. (plies maybe thinks he's just-ice or something with all that in his mouth but he still looks pretty bitchmade to me.) and this is besides the fact that most rap big hitters are like 35 already anyway.

furthermore, and not to repeat what i said upthread too much, musically that first dramatics album is waaaaay closer to the dream than devaughan or legend or anyone better regarded like that.

Is The-Dream getting lost due to its end of the year release, or will it get more radio and video attention in the '08 and be kept alive for both critics and regular folk listeners--be they young or grown folks?

Setting aside my obvious bias against him, The-Dream's obviously not making an instant behind-the-scenes to artist transition* like Ne-Yo, so I think whether he sinks or swims as a star in his own right will probably depend on whether he gets on the hook-singing circuit and works with a bunch of rappers (which is what blew up Akon and T-Pain between their 1st and 2nd albums) instead of merely continuing to write for other singers. Haven't heard the album so I've no idea if he has some surefire hit buried in there that could bring it back from "Falsetto." I remember a few months ago some Idolator commenter positing that there are few R&B singers left who can both make radio hits and shift major units like Mary J. or Usher, etc., and posited, pre-release, that The-Dream and J. Holiday were in that same elite company, to which I laughed and am still laughing heartily and breathing a sigh of relief.

* Speaking of which, is Sean Garrett still coming out with a solo album or did that idea just come and go?

garrett idea seems to have sank without trace, yeah. def the last big secret fish to have never surfaced but er, as the man responsible for "hot as a stove / name is nicole" that's probably for the best

Bad similes are no handicap in modern R&B, though (if anything they're an asset), more likely it was the way he looked so much like Randy Jackson in the "Wall To Wall" video that's holding him back.

xpost: I don't really buy into MJB as "grown folks" R&B for a number of reasons : 1. Her fanbase is pretty wide-ranging, she has the old heads, the *real r&b* folks, people my age, even pre-teens like her.. 2. She's not making music that caters to that market, like Anita did (does..), she's pretty much following mainstream radio R&B trends musically, content-wise is where I could see the "grown" thing.

As far as there being lots of *pretty boys*, I don't think this is anything new.. Tevin Campbell, Ginuwine, Al B. Sure... hell, even Al Green was marketed like that at one point! Though I can see your point about about rap co-opting R&B's "rugged masculinity" (and as a result we have all these R&B thugs like Trey Songz and J Holiday who aren't at all convincing when they go that route). Though I kind of take issue with the "could be ex-cons"/"scary motherfuckers" description.. I mean Jagged Edge are pretty non-threatening...

As far as a generation gap, I can only speak to personal experience... I don't think it's that pronounced. Though *real r&B* artists like Alicia Keys, Heather Headley, even Keyshia and Fantasia do get more respect from older folks than, say, T-Pain..

Glad you guys are finally coming around to Dream's album, I don't get why it took so long.

mary j's 'grown folks' R&B because she is accepted by grown folks, not because she's not accepted by 'regular' (chris brown/ omarion) R&B fans. The ones who start making rules about what R&B they will and wont take seriously tend to be older right??

well, not necessarily. Lots of my friends/people in my age group won't listen to *grown folks*/*real shit* R&B because it's "boring" so it goes both ways.

I think "grown folks" R&B has a pretty particular, very "tasteful" sound.

well we can argue that mary j, like mariah bridges that gap then

the thing is ... tasteful R&B is (can be) kind of awesome ...?

Yeah Mariah and Mary are definitely in limbo kind of, I think in a few years they'll both head in a more "grown" direction. It's weird, because The Breakthrough and The Emancipation of Mimi are both veyr mature albums ("I Found My Everything?" "Fly Like A Bird"?, and the follow ups seem to be reverting back to whats "current" which I find a bit odd... I thought for sure that Mariah's new album would be in the grown and sexy vein (the working title was allegedy Sweet Soul Odysset!!) but she seems to have gone in the exact opposite direction... I think a lot of arists are AFRAID of the "grown" label - Mariah is one, but Toni Braxton is another example - instead of playing to her strong suits (adult contemporary soul/"tasteful" Babyface stuff) she keeps trying to work with the hottest producers in order to stay relevant with the younger crowd..

the thing is ... tasteful R&B is (can be) kind of awesome ...?

yeah definitely, like you said Anita Baker - very "tasteful" and very, VERY awesome. But on the flipside you have someone like Brian McKnight who is TOO tasteful for his own good (though he does have some great songs)...

What the hell is Toni B. even doing?

2 really good songs that are inescapable on radio down here:

ball greazy- shone

idk anything about this dude. pretty nasty sex-raps but when he breaks into a more sing-songy voice the melodies are really fantastic. (shone= a ho from what i've gathered, so add that to the list). with any luck this will blow the fuck up in the summer.

grind mode- i'm so high
i don't know anything about this either, but this is way more standard r&b. pretty expensive, blown-out, the-dream sounding synths. again the rapping is sub-par at best but the chorus is pretty fantastic. another one i wouldn't mind hearing all summer.

^^i have to imagine these are killing/are going to kill in the clubs

that grind mode song entered #25 on billboard's bubbling under r&b/hip hop singles chart

ball greazy meanwhile with no such luck

that grind mode song entered #25 on billboard's bubbling under r&b/hip hop singles chart

this week, i should add

if it didn't say "produced by Gorilla Tek" I would've sworn that Ball Greazy was produced by Shawty Redd... it's in the same vein as "Drifter"/"Sensual Seduction"...

the Grind Mode song as well! Very hot.

i'm not totally up on r&b producers but all these really slick synths remind me of the dream album

both are available for free download on the respective myspaces (ball greazy actually= ball greezy)

yeah I definitely hear The-Dream/Tricky parallels.. also Jazze Pha. "So High" is really great.

more (obnoxious) 80s-revivalism:

O'Neal McKnight - Check Your Coat

^^^this song's pretty good

o'neal mcknight sounds like the worst fake r&b singer name ever

and New Cassie Snippet

very lush, I'm really excited for her album - all of the songs I've heard so far are greta and show a real progression of the sound of her first album.

What the hell is Toni B. even doing?

-- The Reverend, Friday, January 18, 2008 7:39 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I heard that she signed with Clive Davis and is working on a new album but I'm not too sure about that...

the instrumentation is great on that, esp. those little guitar picks that come in on the second verse xp

o'neal mcknight sounds like the worst fake r&b singer name ever

lol yeah.

"Criticize Anytime"

cassie's voice is still a stumbling block for me though :/ :/ :/ :/

i do think "me + u" is an unimpeachable classic tho

ahahaha xp

luther levert

Green Gartside

oh wait

Peabo Bailey

"O'Neal McKnight" sounds more like an Irish R&B singer than "McLovin."

Hey, that "Criticize Anytime" song is pretty damn good.

!!!!! at that synth/vocal duet thing at the end of "I'm So High"

yeah dude

'i'm so high' is officially a song i feel conflicted about hearing on the radio bcuz i really really don't wanna get sick of it

new Badu - "The Healer":

http://www.zshare.net/audio/6658216859ac8d/

I saw Teedra Moses with Eric Roberson opening Saturday night in DC. Weirdly, Roberson performed for 1 hour and 20 minutes, headliner Moses for 45 minutes, and then when folks were starting to head out the doors, Raheem DeVaughn came onstage, complimented the performers, noted that he had just been on the Jimmy Kimmel show, and then Roberson's guitarist encouraged him to sing a song. He went falsetto crazy (in a good way) on Outkast's "Prototype," backed by a mixture of Roberson and Moses' band. In complimenting the openers he gestured toward the musicians onstage and thanked them for "preserving good music."

Eric Roberson used a falsetto on ocassion but mostly employed a more conversational style vocal on both ballads and uptempo numbers. He showed flashes of greatness on a few ballads, but too often he sang rushed through uptempo numbers. Some of the ballads were a bit samey also. Plus his between song patter alternated between goofy schtick and pretentiousness. At one point he said, "I'm a songwriter, but people aren't writing songs now on the charts, so why don't you give me some words and we'll write a song together for Usher." He then cleverly freestyled a song in a sort of sing-song Common meets Native Tongue rap meets neo-soul manner. Of course, despite those comments, he opened with another freestyled song of his own set to the tune of Kanye's "Flashing Lights," and after he finished with a cover of "Beat It," his band did "Party Like a Rockstar." Later that night Teedra covered "Flashing Lights," in her set. She was trying to hard to sound like an old-school soul singer throughout her set and ended up sounding tinny. She lost the sweetness of her voice on disc. She did some Patrice Rushen jazzyesque vocal runs that weren't bad, and was real enthusiastic onstage (with lots of women in the audience singing along) but I was kinda dissapointed in her live overall.

but Toni Braxton is another example - instead of playing to her strong suits (adult contemporary soul/"tasteful" Babyface stuff) she keeps trying to work with the hottest producers in order to stay relevant with the younger crowd..

this is how i feel about Janet Jackson, xcept her strong suits are different than Toni's. but yeah.

Not surprised at all that Devaughn would sing "Prototype," some of the stuff on his album reminds me of that song but good.

I hate to be always be harping on Chris Brown, but please someone agree with me that he sounds like "Weird Al" Yankovic on this new Lil Mama single: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWA9TrQmxoc
like, when he hits the upper register all multi-tracked, it sounds like he should be singing a polka medley.

I was real impressed with DeVaughn. I want to get his cd, and was kicking myself for never seeing him live previously in DC, as he's been performing here a ton for years.

x-post. Ha. Yea, for a verse or so, autotuned Chris Brown does sound like Weird Al.

Early morning MTV highlights certain artists each week with little 30 second clips of them performing live, hanging out, etc.---this week they are now highlighting Keyshia Cole. Is she putting something new out or touring, or did they just decide to highlight her this week?

I think they ran out of camera-ready bloggy types like Kate Nash and just have to throw in some actual mainstream stars now and then. Keyshia's tour w/ R. Kelly just ended but "I Remember" is starting to hit as a single right now.

Haha that Badu cut sounds like Common's Electric Circus, but an ambient outtake.

new shit I'm really feeling at the mo:

MTB4 - Got Me Going / Together

Wynter Gordon - Surveillance

M4tt, why did I know that was your comment before I even read it?

i like jordan's picks - super glad that miami's coming back with hotness after it seemed like lame-ass rick ross had fucked it all up for everyone. speaking of which, it says here one of the grindmode guys used to be in iconz!! classic.

also xstacy floating on their myspace is pretty bonethuggish, and therefore pretty good.

not feeling too much else right now otherwise, not overly bothered with the devaughn so far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9snq-zcdCtI

this teyana taylor thing mildly amused me on a princess of web 2.0 nerd tip ("explorer safari you know where your girl be")(shoulda called herself taylr really), and i like how "google me baby" sounds like something beyonce would holler in freakum dress voodoo mode. pleasingly smooth jazze pha breakdown on the chorus too, as per.

i mean it's no usher 'dot com' but then what is

ah see look ballgreezy is signed to 'iconz music' and gorilla tek is none other than the guy that produced 'get fucked up' (and jacki-o 'pussy real good', who the fuck remembers that!) SO THERE U GO

also ricky ross is on the remixes to both of those cuts. oh well.

oh btw

shone= a ho from what i've gathered, so add that to the list

means bj! in olde england we call them shiners you see. (perhaps the mia-uk entente on this topic is what gave us the 'get fucked up' 12 reissued on relentless with a so solid mix.)

this song is the best shit ever.

maybe her music is actually good but fuck teyana taylor, she was on my super sweet 16 and is really just a snotty obnoxious egotistical brat

not like i'm fucking with anything pharell's trying to push nowadays anyway

this song is the best shit ever.

-- r|t|c, Friday, January 25, 2008 1:27 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

^yes

also i'm sure you can get ross on your remix for a blunt and a cheeseburger but god damn he needs to stay away from songs i like

um, teyana taylor is actually really awesome and fierce and not at all obnoxious. her super sweet 16 was the best one ever.

so i like what i hear when i'm hearing what i hear when i'm listening to this REMIX, see i wouldnt change chubb rock, his life's just fine fine fine fine OOH

or something

You know I love music. And every time I hear somethin' hot, it makes me wanna move. It makes me wanna have fun. But it's somethin' about this joint right here, this joint right here, it makes me wanna WOOOOO!

Look

http://a29.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/102/l_256e5eb18d09ed693c83b71653800ebc.jpg

One of the Danja tracks on the Step Up 2 sdtk -- by someone named KC. It is excellent and pretty much unGoogleable (unless you want to know the other tracks on the Step Up 2 sdtk). Maybe KC will become the Sabelle or Simple E of the '00s.

Step Up 2 The Streets is one of those weird rare situations where the soundtrack has way more advance hype than the movie itself, first video for it dropped 3 months before I saw any trailers.

Never really got into "The Way I Are" but am liking that newer Timbo/Keri "Scream" a lot more.

same fader that had nina sky on the cover a coupla months back? j/k!

talking of which, the most important thing about the step up 2 s/t (more important than 'is it you', oh yeah) is obv that it is the first step into public consciousness of BRIT & ALEX AKA THE JOHN FRIEDA HAIR TWIN BITCHES!! stick on 'this is a clubbe bangerrrrr' and tell me the heirs to paris hilton havent finally arrived.

talking of which part 2

http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h62/freshcrunkjuice/04/jdj1.jpg

"if jermaine likes it... then i like it"

i am not sure that <i>step up 2</i>'s cassie/brit & alex combo is going to beat the kelis/deepside double on volume 1, however.

save the last dance 2 has a special place in my heart for going all out pleasantly generic randomness. stomp the yard having mr lif on the same cd as chris brown also commendable, if foolhardy. never heard feel the noise.

oh btw arent those new missy cuts on su2 just TERRIBLE, jesus

http://assets.interscope.com/banners/kerihilson/keri_mcdlive_vote.gif

good work whoever thought balaclavas were the way to go on the 'scream' vid

hahaha, not as ridiculous as tubby tim in the tub

haha where is that bit, i can't deal with watching it again! OH do you mean the bit where he skims the city skiyline with his hand like it's bathfoam?

"let's journey across the venetian skies" is another great bit of clutch lyricism i take it btw?

venetian blinds? venusian? venusian is kinda good actually. venerean disease.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61Z3cVi3UyL._SS500_.jpg

^ nicole scherzinger, yesterday

ps. new g-unit beatjack singsong is ace obv! why COS THEY ALL ARE

what the hell is going on with the amerie album exactly? there are several import versions on amazon... is it really for sale at walmart?

i think they are rerecording it? or not? just download it, christ.

sort of get a perverse rachelstevensish pleasure out of seeing the indie token darling fail now.

supposedly she's been dropped from Columbia already, so I don't think a full U.S. release is ever coming. it really is on the Wal-Mart website, though:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp?cat=33225

ok so i WAS gonna come on here and exclaim my wtfs at this nugget from andy k's allmusic blog:

Dear Jayne, “Rain” (Music Line/Capitol)

...If the production reminds you of J Holiday’s “Bed” and The-Dream’s album track “Purple Kisses,” with that fluttering interstellar glide, it’s probably because they all share the same producer: Carlos McKinney (aka L.O.S., Supaproducer L.O.S.). McKinney played keyboards with Inner City (”Good Life”)

crazy right? when he was 14. but then that was all before i just read that

JANELLE MONAE
HAS
SIGNED
TO
BAD BOY.

Janelle Monae got eliminated on Rock Of Love way too early this season.

oh look, some more faint hope for Amerie:
http://idolator.com/350534/the-amerie-album-it-lives-maybe-sorta-are-we-being-too-optimistic

not to rain on the parade, but as an avid watcher of tnt basketball programs i'm going to go with "just a director w/ good taste" bcuz they play mary j, 50, etc. as intro/outro music/music as background to highlights etc

seriously pathetic!

that promo just proves that 'gotta work' was one-note advert material all along, maybe random movie soundtrack offcut at best

yeah, woulda never made the cut for Step Up 2

and i don't mean the movie soundtracks i was on about upthread (haha THERE YOU GO THNX AL), more like the rnb equiv to nickleback 'hero' or something

(actually kinda like 'hero' still (best song criminal dude from the simpsons ever wrote) but more importantly you lot probably don't right? otherwise in songstructural terms i remain accurate)

I like "Hero" fine, but I'm probably the one person here who it'd be predictable to hear that from.

also, criminal dude from Simpsons = Snake? because I think the Nickelback guy looks more like the John Goodman biker character Meat Hook from that one later episode.

why can't i ever seem to hate on your pedantry

what's wrong with me

because it's charming. i'm like a jaymc who doesn't care about other posters' personal lives.

it is kinda cute yeah.

anyway yes snake, although it was more in ref to dude's enunciation, partic of the "watchin us" bit in the outro, as well as "wings of the eagles" and such, than anything to do with his looks.

I actually held back on the pedantry by not pointing out that "Hero" was not a Nickelback song per se but a collaboration between frontman Chad Kroeger and Josey Scott of Saliva. But, y'know, so much for restraint.

yeah dude slow your roll!

http://www.zshare.net/audio/7008543e3a5e5c/

this bedingfield remix is pretty great.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Missy’s New Video "Ching-A-Ling" -- Get Your 3D Glasses!

So here's the deal! Missy's brand spankin' new video "Ching-A-Ling" is going to be in 3-D!!! So your going to need 3-d glasses to view the video! Don't have 3-d glasses? Don't trip! The good folks at Touchstone and Atlantic Records are here to hook you up! Check the locations/times below to pick up your glasses before the premiere on February 4th!!

21:37 - 0 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment

That's kind of a horrible gimmick.

I don't know if Janelle signing to diddy is a good look or not considering his track record... but apparently he's been trying to sign her for a long time now so maybe he won't fuck this one up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNJt5ADHzIY

She had me at Chaka.

yeah awesome video.

Janet has two new full tracks streaming on her site. JD-produced "Rock With U" is very Kylie (in her starry-eyed electro mode), decent enough, but the recurring autotuned "rock with you" backvox are a bit too "Piece of Me" (i mean, I love Britney and all, but if i wanted Britney i'd listen to Britney!).

on the other hand, Darkchild-helmed "Luv" is AMAZING. i'm one of those weirdoes who prefers Janet's nineties-and-onwards era, i prefer my Janet soft and pretty and wistful instead of hard and metallic - and this just hits all the right buttons for me!

not overly bothered with the devaughn so far

Are you crazy, this album is bananas and awesome! "Friday (Shut the Club Down)" should be a #1 single

Oh and no to be y'know all stereotypically me or anything but I am loving Badu's "Honey" single.

yeah see, i did have a feeling 'sensual seduction' would greenlight a whole bunch of iffy sa-ra type herbs: http://www.myspace.com/dukesmuzik ('stranger' is actually produced by shawty redd in fact, but the other one is the thing in question)

nothing's ever beating 'shone' though.

HATERRRRRR
this ain't concern to you
WAITERRRRR
i need the bottle boo
FLAVOURRRR
grey goose n orange juice
PLAYERRRRR
thats what the soulful do

yeah so the-dream's album IS great

you guys dont lie

they all hated it at first for retarded reasons.

as usual i am rite.

haha

Was merely on a proverbial fence.

yeah it is awesome even though it's meta as fuck

i almost abandoned it forever the first time i heard the soulja boy 'yoooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuus' on whatever song he has them on

lmao yeah.

thats actually my fave song on the whole album tho, "luv songs"

Speaking of songwriters going solo, have you guy's heard Sean "The Pen" Garrett's new single? He sounds like Ray-J. That is not a compliment lol (though Ray-J's new song is the shit). The song is hot though, catchy. His voice is obnoxoious though, he should stick to writing.

I use the word "though" too much.

even more than being broke and having to market himself as a guerilla porn star, i don't think there's been a bigger sign of where ray j's career is at then only being able to spring for yung berg for his big comeback single

"He sounds like Ray-J" was understood not to be a compliment.

Until I looked him up on wiki wiki wild wikipedia just now, I was always under the mistaken impression that the S. Garrett writing all these tunes was the S. Garrett from Playa.

how much do you guys feel like nu-timbaland is influencing other R&B and how much do you feel like he's just riding a contemporary wave?

i know he's boring to talk about but i'm genuinely curious

and how much credit goes to diddy/winans/hitmen

hmm, well, Diddy's whole thumpy LinnDrum thing started with that last album and "Last Night," which came out pretty much the same time as Timbo really went in that direction on the Justin album, and Polow did "Promise" right in that same timeframe too, so I'll give them all the benefit of the doubt that those things all just kind of happened independently of each other and weren't biting anyone but the O.G.s who did that shit 20 years ago. I don't really hear anyone working off of Tim's current template right now (other than Danja blending in with the whole Miami synth shit), in that last issue of Scratch he was all convinced that "Kiss Kiss" was biting him but I don't hear that at all.

alex have you heard the usher "single" w/ jeezy?

nah, been meaning to but keep forgetting, i'll go find it right now...

OK, that was pretty boring on first impression. not sure where Polow is going with his post-"Promise" ballads, it seemed like "Crying Out For Me" was cut from the same cloth but just never connected with me. "Moving Mountain" is alright but similiarly doing nothing for me. I like "Dat Girl Right There" OK and none of these songs are a "Pop Ya Collar"-level fiasco, but dude seriously needs to drop a surefire hit after all these drippy fucking leaks.

Step Up 2 OST is awesome. I like that Cupid song. And the KC track. And Cassie, obv. Also, Missy's "Shake Your Pom-Pom" = fun (haha)

in that last issue of Scratch he was all convinced that "Kiss Kiss" was biting him but I don't hear that at all.

you don't hear it? the kick drum + bass? it reminds me of "one in a million" but the song isnt driven by it I guess. I just assumed Tim produced it until I read somewhere here that he didn't..!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=djcQ6GrnweI

this song would be amazing if it were sung by Keyshia or Beyoncé.

in that last issue of Scratch he was all convinced that "Kiss Kiss" was biting him but I don't hear that at all.

you don't hear it? the kick drum + bass? it reminds me of "one in a million" but the song isnt driven by it I guess. I just assumed Tim produced it until I read somewhere here that he didn't..!

-- daria-g, Monday, February 11, 2008 11:32 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Link

yeah, the drums sound a little like 90's Timbo, but so do a lot of things, and Tim cited it specifically as an example of someone biting the current Tim/Danja synth style, which was the part that confused me.

COMEBACK COMEBACK COMEBACK

hahahahaha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwSNLwv4pok

brainwasher i heard your chris brown/jordin sparks ("j-sparks" reports seacrest) jam on american top 40 countdown tonight

great song.

aight back to work you hoes

armel ft juelz santana - i took it down

hi there 2004!! anything to offer us in these modern times? "i got game they say / i holler ay bay bay / next thing you know we under sheets like the kkk", cough hmm well ok but yr tune is still way fun. what's that you're saying now? that between me and you the only point of this was to remind us all that there's no need to keep trying to make a silk purse out of that charmless n choresome raheem devaughn cd just cos it's the only fucking record ever actually released in 2008? o well good job in that case! lol yeah 'friday (shut the club down)' really is the most embarrassing thing ever, you're quite right.

lloyd ft ludacris - how we do

no guys sorry you can't have "cupid schaffel" WHY COS I JUST SAID IT. this is one of those rare moments when nerdery brings the insight foresight moresight because this song kinda leaked a week or so ago, and the hook then went "this is how we do it in the A"; i liked it a lot at the time but maybe thought that, while still an admirably brazen stand by lloyd not to sit down and shut up for usher year, it was missing a little something extra. now though it goes "this is how we do it ROUND MY WAY" and how fucking good is that all of a sudden right! one supposes this all lays out something cute and fundamental at the heart of lloyd's charms, or even of charm itself, but fill in those gaps yourself while you listen to the little gremlin vamp excellently ("little man ima make you sa-hayyyyy ") over this banger right here.

alishay ft e40 - grindin

dunno who this is, just thought i'd chuck it in cos it's not often people bother with this kind of tense drama swish anymore? strikes me as something the lex perhaps might revel in overrating. way too much 40 water dousing the smoulder though anyway, "can i buy you a jaegerboooomb" uh fuck no you lamer!! the bay area is terrible, just terrible.

shareefa ft jadakiss - on fire

i know you just started singing g-unit too; i'm thinking maybe that was the point. this is basically dross but amuses on the chorus when it seriously sounds just like she's yowling trying to interrupt the song cos someone actually did set fire to her out of boredom, all beating on the soundproof booth glass while chaka zulu's outside solenmly headnodding with his eyes closed. i guess?

blame the armel for that all coming out in "lol swygart can't stop blogging" style btw, sorry

ok that sparks/brown 'no air' thing is some epic ott sillyness 4real! can't help but laugh when after like the 3 longest minutes of your life already they still keychange and holla out like YAAHHH HAVE SOME DRUMS ON THAT AS WELL MOTHERFUCKER

mop should totally stick it on in the studio when they get down to recording kill nigga die slo bluckka bluckka bloaoow blood sweat tears and we out

kill nigga die slo bluckka bluckka bloaoow blood sweat tears and we out 35

fixed

haha damn you didn't have to go in that hardcore on the Raheem Devaughn CD, I can't really picture it being up your alley to begin with anyway (although it definitely feels more hit/miss every time I hear it, and I still go back and forth on liking or hating "Friday"). Shareefa/Jadakiss is the combo that I have instant high expectations for, but man that song is bad. Lloyd/Luda is cool, though, I would not mind hearing that on the radio every day.

ha yeah obv i am just bullying the poor sap for the sake of it - it's not actually that bad an album at all really, not great but not bad, and i do esp like 'desire' for its marvins - but i dunno, i think in deliberately lining it up against that armel, which came so instantly likeable in comparison, i was again just railing against that vaguely annoying nu-soul disconnect you get with this stuff, both of itself and critically to some extent. yeah, no, dunno? also it is probably time i switched to decaf.

no mercy on 'friday' though! when pops feels the need to party like a rockstar it's just >_<

and i have janet, webbie and shawty lo to play with now so whatevs. the janet is... really, really entertaining me actually! SO much more than the sum of its parts, is pretty much about all i got to say about it so far, but yeah.

btw al you ever hear that jaheim album that sneaked out at the end of last year?

btw brainwasher (or anyone) you ever hear the whole jordin sparks album? i had a little flickthru and felt it might be fruitful.

btw tim you ever hear the og of that rhian benson / slum village / dwele remix you posted on the dixon thread? it is a shimmering moody banger i used to play the shit out of when i was jazzier. (bugz in the attic flattered to deceive then too, though.)

not for nothing but i'm still jamming "can't help but wait" like it's still november '07. i'm totally cool with ne-yo rip-offs that are actually better than ne-yo.

I was under the impression that Ne-Yo wrote "Can't Help But Wait"

that would make sense! he should have kept it for himself then imo

nah never heard the new Jaheim -- he's actually a perfect example of the first quarter drought DeVaughn is benefitting from; his last album dropped 2 Januarys ago so I had all the time in the world to check it out and let it grow on me, this one came during the December glut and I just couldn't be bothered.

"Can't Help But Wait" is produced by the other half of the Ne-Yo/Stargate assembly line, but it was written by Johnta Austin, who I think is revealing himself to be a lot less one-note than Ne-Yo at least as a songwriter.

heard the usher 'i cant win' leak today, ne-yo at his worst with another terrible slog. less bergman more sirk plz.

yeah i can't win is pretty awful. ditto for moving mountains.

actually all the new usher stuff is sounding suspect, getting strong chris brown 08 bad vibes now with all this desperately looking to every producer to save his ass malarkey. 'love in the club' ain't doing shit for me, although i did like polow admitting he was the one who leaked it "to get the ball rolling".

i'm pretty down with 'love in the club' if it exercised jeezy (still got love) for another rapper or just left ursh all alone. 'dat girl right there' is still a jam... but i'm definitely sad that none of these slow jams are burn/u make me wanna type smashes (aware that i may be asking for too much)

oh yeah forgot about 'dat girl'... haha, stack all these leaks together and you've pretty much got half of the most nonsensical album ever. good thing you guys all rep for making your own albums out of 72-track grabbags huh! but yeah something like 'burn' i still got no clue who wrote or produced and it's all the better compared with how it's tediously playing out now. guess he needs another 'yeah!' to utterly rape the zeitgeist one time and be done with it but i wouldnt know what to suggest either tbh

say you switched lloyd for ursh on that 'how we do' tune up there, anyone think that'd be a monster or is it still a little too b-list? i can't quite decide.

maybe i do like 'love in the club' after all, i dunno. the verses are still the best bits. what is that familiar japanesey thing polow's interpolating anyway?

yeah i kinda wish the chorus went somewhere besides repeating 'love in the club' ad infinitum (not that i don't like it but i wish i love it). another song that sounds like a smash but is only a solid B.

i don't think usher could really take that song any further than lloyd. that's not a slight on ursh nor a lloyd compliment but the song sounds pretty stuck in its ways. maybe i'm wrong. i mean it'd probably chart higher out of name recognition.

I can't really picture Usher on the Lloyd, and if he was on it it would ring as a hallow "Yeah!"-alike (which, at the very least, none of his recent dudes have felt like). I kinda feel like A-list R&B kinda crumbles under its own weight a lot of times, (excepting song-a-day types like R. who keep it moving regardless), it's not a genre that works very well with importantitis, my favorite songs usually aren't by the super-big stars, or are like their 3rd or 4th single or a deep cut that wasn't painstakingly engineered to be huge.

ok that post was sloppy as hell, lol @ "his recent dudes" instead of duds

"It's the popcorn smash you've all been waiting for...Usher...Timbaland...Polow Da Don and Young Jeezy in 'Hallow Dude', in theaters this summer"

well if lloyd had come out with 'yeah' back then i'm thinking he'd probly've got blanked, so yeah name recognition being the transformative social conduit that it is is what i'm saying

being honest i fronted on 'yeah' at the time anyway, haha. "yeah but what about RED LIGHT on the b-side grumble grumble!"

i still think "yeah" is an all-time jam, but def not even in my top 5 usher singles (despite what i said on the usher singles poll) which tells you what i think of him

"Red Light" wasn't very good though. i listened to it thrice and that's 18 minutes (!) I'll never get back.

I've never heard the original of the Rhian Benson track rtc - got the Bugz remix on their remixes package which I had to review a few years ago. Reasoning that Bozelka saying "you're not getting what I want to hear" after raving about Owusu & Hannibal probably meant he just wanted poppy broken beat.

I have not heard any of these exciting singles. But I kinda think a-list R&B made more sense at the beginning of the decade when there was more consensus about what was hot and why. I'm sympathetic to Al's position now (R&B working when it's not a huge production) but I don't think that's just an eternal aesthetic stance - it actually reflects something about R&B right now maybe.

The new Badu album is on some weirdo future-funk tangent. Loving it.

Did anyone see her on 106 last night? ROFL omg she was totally high or something.

yo tim you recognize the genius of the-dream rite?

"Red Light" wasn't very good though. i listened to it thrice and that's 18 minutes (!) I'll never get back.

liked it better when they called it futuresex/lovesounds eh!

...

no that doesnt rly work does it. never knew it had a video; i think i'd imagined it as a sort of darkside thing about prostitute obsession, but it seems pretty wet now yeah.

http://www.zshare.net/audio/7951671ceb6222/

^ benson, for when you get round to things. i miss dwele.

yo deej you think u might wanna say why you think the-dream's a genius? or is that like too rockcriticky

everyone sure they hate 'falsetto' btw? ur all positive? last chance?uh oh freestyle remixxx we ronggggg

"liked it better when they called it futuresex/lovesounds eh!"

Um, yeah! Lil Jon never knew how to do long tracks really. It's the same problem as with "You Better Tell Her" (although the latter is a better track cos of Teedra mostly), which not only goes on for too long without doing anything new but actually feels like its length is some editing or recording mistake. I was convinced there was a problem with my MP3 and then I bought the album and it's actually like that!

Deej I've only heard "Falsetto" and "Ditch That", both of which I really like, especially the latter - need to find the rest of the album. R&B/Hip Hop is like at its lowest ebb of public awareness/availability ever in Australia. I've still yet to find a real life copy of the UGK album.

Love how "Ditch That" just kinda loses it in its second half and gets all angst-prog-lush in a blatant and rather self-conscious attempt to get to Britney levels of bizarro - only he has to do it through songcraft whereas Britney would have seemed bizarro even if she'd been taking notes from nu nu Mandy Moore rather than Dalbello (britney as 2008 dalbello is my new theory btw). Which (that's right) succeeds in a JT way where "Red Light" falls short (which is not to say Usher doesn't do epics well - but "Burn", "Confessions" etc are a very different kind of epic).

I'm vaguely inspired to do a secret history of this kind of manoeuvre. Some entries:
- Kylie Minogue's electronic stuff circa 1997
- Daniel Bedingfield first album (no song in particular, just the vibe I guess) (2002)
- Justin Timberlake, "LoveStoned/I Think That She Knows"

Oh no it's a white thing maybe? Wait - I just remembered Missy Elliot's "You Don't Know".

Will report back on the benson.

that remix is great but "falsetto" on it's own is pretty tight, kinda mad that that mix ditches the FORCEFUL "umbrella" drums but w/e

the way they flip the hook though reminds me of "fast car" so A++

i love 'falsetto'. the transition into it on the album is awesome

im having trouble verbalizing in an interesting way why i like it as of yet. 'genius' isnt intended to be, like, auteurish praise or something, i just found myself immediately addicted to listening to it. I am v. big on the sound design of the whole record, it sounds so perfect. Mostly my defenses of it are real boring, like 'great songwriting'-style shit, so far.

'ditch that' is pretty atypical for the album, it should be mentioned.

"luv songs" = goat

yeah it kinda reminds me of 'so anxious'

'luv songs' is the best but my favorite stretch on the album is fast car -> falsetto

also i cant stand 'i luv your girl,' or at least i always find myself skipping it halfway thru

I think Tim would flip for the the Hyphen Dream album. Might have to break the self-imposed MUST BE RELEASED WITHOUT EXCEPTION DURING PROPER CALENDAR YEAR TO QUALIFY FOR YEAR-END LIST rule.

New Amerykah, Part One: 4th World War When the Pawn Doo Dah Band Tarkus Medley = A+

Discipline = B+

hey ak whats yr take on raheem the-dream devaughn?

Such confusion! I'm assuming you mean Raheem DeVaughn and not Hakeem tha(nonhyphenated)Dream. I really like Love Behind the Melody, yes.

LBTM is pretty great, better than The Love Experience, though basically I just listen to "Customer", "Mo Better" and "Love Drug"

not that the rest isn't great it's just those three are the obvious standouts to me

yeah deej, i've had trouble articulating it myself, cf rambling screeds passim - sweet confection of super addictiveness (like u say, also yes the transitions) mingling with initial personal apathy to dream's whole weird thing etc, and how that ends up changing, it's tricky to me. (might be nice to be all "hi dere press play on a cd" for a change but what can you do.)

saying that, those ambiguities do fade away as familiarity sets in with the album and also d:ream's repute as a reliable freelance songwriter. this new karina pasian of his pretty good too, although "i'm 16 y.o. asking god WHY, OH!!!" sounds more like the clutch's sort of gag.

discipline will probably settle down to a B+ for me too eventually, but i'm in the first flushes of an A right now. 'luv' and 'rollercoaster' are superb, and 'can't b good' was probly the first thing out of a rummage in the jackson-family-brand box of exactly the same songs but i'll cherish it anyway like all the rest.

badu i've yet to get into the right mood for, maaaaaaan.

i had no idea 'honey' was 9th wonder, maybe time for a reevaluation

add a lil lemon oahahahhhhhh you my favorite drink

Anyone know who's responsible for the crazy synth shit on some of those late '70s Nancy Wilson albums (one of the tracks off Music on My Mind is the root of "Honey")? Guessing it's either Larry Farrow or Clarence McDonald. Probably need to get whatever other albums this person is on -- I have "Sunshine," off another Wilson album from the same era, on a comp and love that too.

"Love in the Club" is kind of awful. : (

woah it's a revive not about cassie

Err, what I meant was Missy Elliott isn't fun until she jumped the shark.

can i just say how much i dig the new Estelle, even better than 1980.

yeah, don't mind that estelle, bit of the cheapo dr buzzards about it. kanye's verse might be a challenger to his fall out boy spot for awfulness though.

sorry to bring up the-dream again but i just read this on his wikipedia page and :-O

The album was written and recorded in only nine days with twelve tracks making the final cut.

did tim ever hear this??

I heard that he's already pretty much done with the next one, but LA Reid wants to milk this one.

he should be pretty much done with a few albums at this point

Gahhh. The-Hyphen is an awful singer and usually pretty bad songwriter, but Lovehate manages to be good in spite of this. I blame Tricky Stewart.

"Livin' a Lie" is kind of incredible just in how it shows how much The-Dream is vocally outclassed by RIHANNA.

The-Dream is better when he's humping Prince than when he's humping R. Kelly. "Fast Car" and "Nikki" are jams. "Falsetto" sounds like it should be from the first "Ginuwine" album or something.

h8r, the album is brill ur just jehlus.

I said the album is good!

Why did I put "Ginuwine" in quote marks?

pretty bad songwriter

u RONG

and as a singer he's fine.

i agree w/ you about how falsetto has a ginuwine vibe to it

No, no. "Umbrella" and a couple others are well-written, hence the "usually" qualifier. I suppose I should seperate "songwriter" into "melodicist" and "lyricist". As a melodicist, he's not especially gifted, but no less so than most of his peers. As a lyricist, 90% of the time he is banal beyond belief.

His voice has a very reedy quality to it that I find unappealing. There's also not a great deal of nuance or variance to what he does as a vocalist. I'm sure that can be said about plenty of singers I like, but I probably wouldn't notice his single-dimensionedness if I liked his default better. It's not a dealbreaker, but I'd rather hear someone else (and by "someone else" I do not mean fucking J. Holiday, there's your dealbreaker right there) sing his songs.

That all said, I do like the album, more on account of the production than anything.

I'm certainly not going to say he's dead to me a la Al or anything, I'm just mildly annoyed at his shortcomings.

haha no he did "Just Fine" so I will grudgingly admit he's capable of making shit I like. "Okay" was good, too! but generally you hit the nail on the head about what bothers me about him. and the whole tic with repeating syllables just ain't cute (especially when it's him going EHHHH between every damn line) and that gimmick often works against the modest gifts he does have as a songwriter.

The only time that really bugs me is "Shawty is the Shit" where it's right in the middle of the verses and not produced in a way that sets it apart from the main lines, which makes it really fucking confusing to listen to.

i love the ays in 'shawty is a ten'

shawty is a ten rmx /w fab>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>shawty is da shit

that's mostly to do w/ me liking how the word ten sounds in the song as compared to shit but fab always sounds great over shit like this

???fab is on the original too dude

and shawty is the shit is way better because of the whole 'shawty is the sh-sh-sh-sh-sugar honey ice tea'

i was under the impression that fab was on the single/video version but the album version was 'shawty is da shit' w/ just dream

"Livin' a Lie" is kind of incredible just in how it shows how much The-Dream is vocally outclassed by RIHANNA.

My favorite Rihanna song, period.

yeah the solo version of "Shawty" was the first one that got a lot of spins, then they threw a Fab verse on the video version but that never really got much airplay or made it onto the album, and then there was a 'proper' remix w/ R. Kelly a few months later. I hate that Fab verse anyway, the best part of the song is the way the original begins and he just steps all over it.

???? i have the vinyl + download of the album and both have the fab verse

That sustained high note on "I Luv You Girl" is The-Dream's greatest moment.

The Dream/Stewart song on the Janet album is wack. The rest of the album is good so far.

The fake Rich Harrison track is really outta place after all this euro-dance stuff, kind of like the real Rich Harrison track on the Diddy album. Not bad at all, just sticks out like a sore thumb, which may be a good thing and wtf Missy E sounds like wfb.

Actually, definitely a good thing. The album's a bit front-loaded, so the wakeup is a positive.

EHGHHHCK @ title track

so, um.. yeah. this new Ne-Yo single is the business. Everyone is doing the 4/4 beat now.

Also jayms madison - room service has been on constant repeat on my iPod for the last 2 weeks or so.

???? i have the vinyl + download of the album and both have the fab verse

-- deej, Sunday, 2 March 2008 23:52 (1 week ago) Link

OK, I thought based on Jordan's post that he wasn't on the album version, but my point still stands that the song was getting spins for MONTHS before the Fab verse was added.

btw what do y'all think of the new Ashanti:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hayE_ZP0rI

I think the song is kinda alright but the miscalculation of it as a comeback single spills over into almost WTF territory with the over the top video.

this is actually her 3rd single. I like it, though it's too big for her voice and would be much better if Keyshia or someone like that was singing it, but it's a good song..

it's definitely the best out of the 3 and it'll be a moderate-sized hit for her most likely, it's already doing better than "switch" and "hey babe"

oh I'm sure she's been releasing "first singles" into an uncaring marketplace for the past two years, but this is still the first one that's gotten a video and they're calling it the lead single now.

http://capi001.edgeboss.net/wmedia/capi001/cherish/audio/thetruth/cherish_framed_out.asx?artistid=urbannewmedia

cherish single written by the-dream

which i cant listen to cuz im at work just thought some people would care

this new Ne-Yo single is the business.

^^^

This beats the shit out of anything on his second album.

new lloyd/wayne collabo is lazy and kind of awful

although the opening few bars of waynes verse are kind of great i think

guys this 'single again' remix with lil wayne/plies/ross is so ridiculous

http://www.zshare.net/audio/86450827c86a01/

this chorus still kills tho

also plies opening line is "DAMN RIGHT I CHEATED" surprise surprise

rick ross singing about relationships

jeez so wayne is even on the remix to the song about breaking up with wayne?

girl i'm healthy / girl i'm lying / girl just help me / help me fly / but what flight are you on / you might not be talking about me in this song!!

^ should really know better but i be entertained anyway

(sns scriptwriters can we have a nivea beatjack next with the-dream busting back after, kthnxbye)

feel really bad for nivea these days, first bighead dream divorces her and now how's this for a slap in the face

http://www.singersroom.com/news/entertainment-story-1423.asp

fuming

not feeling that ne-yo at all, something overslick and nasty about it. also being called 'closer', you tend to imagine that's his alltime favourite film (or better yet no, he totally prefers the play). oh ne-yo!

Yeah, I could totally picture Ne-Yo and Panic At The Disco bonding over shitty movies they all love after some award show.

probably his fave joy division album too, let's face it

cherish song is aight actually, between this and the 'killa' video they might well be the lone standing standard-bearers of edgy boss bitch 00s r&b. maybe. not quite convinced yet though. "but in my true religion / i'm so far from pigeon", haha good work dream

jayms madison just feels so post-ryanleslie bedroom internetty that i'm not sure it's even worth repping for however well put-together it be

enjoyed the lloyd, no great shakes but it is pleasant to me. 'how we do' kinda getting critslammed huh? not sure i quite get the nuance of what people are wanting from him tbh

ashanti, whatevs

http://www.zshare.net/audio/8874598e6fbc68/

it's the u_unit

sick of talking about the guy but fyi dream lovers come and rescue his very slight remix of 'touch my body'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2gpBVhTwjI

(really hate the actual vid to that song btw, totally the wrong tack to take)

haha now excuse me while i go talk about him again on the other thread

yah wtf @ that "remix"

mightve been awesome if he'd kept going and widescreen unfolded it a la 'ditch that' with loads of echoplex'd harmonizing and whatnot, bass booms and claps all coming back for the crescendo

i phoned polow and he agreed

all remixes in 2008 should have plies on em acting a fool, i decided

DAMN RIGHT I PUT THAT ON YOUTUBE
DAMN RIGHT I AM UNHYGIENIC IN THE CLUB
SORRY BITCH I LEFT THAT UMBRELLA ON THE TRAIN
LOL MJB U OLD

etc

haha

loool

song id? has akon on it, but not akon's song I don't think, refrain is something like "girl, stop showing off". That's not it at all, but that's it at all, but that's kind of the gist of things.

i think this is it rev: rolling US charts 2008/talk about "pop" here

Thx for being able to make sense of my garbled post. That's it. I guess Colby O'Donis joins Oneal McKnight on the Irish r&b singer list. Speaking of whom, screw his label for adding Greg Nice (!?) to "Check Your Coat". All 'spect to him, but dude fucks up the song.

random thought: "Hypnotized" is one of those potential monster summer jams denied its destiny by being relegated to the winter.

http://www.zshare.net/audio/8518758fc1b3c5/

Brandon Hines new single... there's been lots of hype about this guy and he's gained a pretty big following off of his indepently released album Love Music. Now he's on a major.. really talented dude.

he's like trey songz without the rapping and the annoying vibrato.

also, my girl Jazmine Sullivan is going to be featured on Missy's new album. Should be great, their previous collabos are awesome. Especially this one whenever her debut comes out it's going to be GAME OVER.

luda on the "like you'll never see me again" remix :D

http://www.zshare.net/audio/7654186945e312/

really like the original too

no one annoys the shit out of me but this broken/strained voice she's got going for her is really working

http://www.zshare.net/audio/8954276644ef16/

new ne-yo lolz w/ rihanna... can't quite decide if i'd rather beyonce irrreplaceabling it as so to tug on heartstrings or if ri-ri's deadpan is just the minor job

also dammit al, putting ne-yo and p!@td together really is proving hard to get over all of a sudden

grab your clothes and get gone
- you better hurry up!
before the sprinklers come on

= winner

aren't Ne-Yo and Panic both from Vegas, too? worst episode of MTV My Block ever.

you know, I'm actually starting to respect Rihanna as a singer (which I probably should have started doing a year or so ago)

mightve been awesome if he'd kept going and widescreen unfolded it a la 'ditch that' with loads of echoplex'd harmonizing and whatnot, bass booms and claps all coming back for the crescendo

or had a quick go on donkey kong country underwater level, whichevs. sort of impressive sultry stab at a vague bamboo-panelled eroticism i guess but it's no ciara 'get up' rmx or anything really. hm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9y_j-hHjK4

oop, this is the link u want actually

what is "bamboo-panelled eroticism"? does it involve happy endings?

http://www.zshare.net/audio/96281269744fcf/

we heard this? Charlie Wilson, "Let It Out"

I like Wilson having a context to funk it up, but I'm not sure this is the right one.

weird hearing his voice thru all those effects

cool song tho

Glad I heard that Grind Mode song from upthread that I forgot about again.

I was quite wary coming in because of the title, but "Google Me" is great, especially the "You ain't nobody/ you better ask somebody" bits. She sounds a lot like MJB.

ok the Cheri Dennis album. yes. very yes.

(all the insight I have right now)

lol you are always so late

never said I wasn't

nothing wrong with being late don't take offense lol

guys what's this like

kinda like the cassie album except with someone that can sing

(the tradeoff being that there's nothing nearly as astounding as "Me & U", but better overall)

so like a buncha slick electro?

not electro per se, but definitely slick and bright. Dennis, as a singer, is very sweet.

anyway some new(ish) shit i've been listening to:

lil ronnie - addicted

lloyd & lil wayne- girls around the world (this song is SO FUCKING HOT... on some throwback early 90s shit)

cherish - amnesia (very destiny's child-circa 'writings on the wall')

dwele - i'm cheatin

nina sky - secrets

also, estelle's album is pretty good. only listened once tho.

most of it sounds more like "Long Way 2 Go" than "Me & U", if that gives you an idea xp

Brainwasher bein on top of shit so I don't have to can finally get around to listening to it in two months

that wayne verse is fire

OK I'm thinkin' of a master plan
Nah, I'm lyin', shorty on my mind
Shorty like a fryin'
pan, and I ain't got
Nothin' but sweat inside my hands

new Lloyd single ft. Luda...kind of on the house&b tip

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_1qAYJot-Ns

feeling it

@ r|t|c
I think it would be way cornier with usher on it

so, what's good.

some goddamn nonsense spoken about the cheri dennis alb there rev.

that wayne verse is fire 50% him just obnoxiously chuckling at himself

-- J0rdan S., Wednesday, April 2, 2008 12:43 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

hey cassie fans! official girl hat geleaken! now go ahead and count yourselves lucky that it's just karina paisan yoinking it, cos it's not much cop i don't think.

'thirsty', on the other hand, is excellent. love the way the song kinda reflects the sudden dive from glass-of-water plain whimsy into "we could be fully submerged" deep-end murk, and then teasingly back out again.

ryan leslie's valentine song is nice too. i clowned him for being a bit concieted but that and the 'diamond girl' video mightve made him slightly more lovable in an almostic kanyic way.

'touch my body rmx' has also grown on me a lot. like a strange alien mould. what do ppl think it achieves?

the other day on the radio a DJ used the "Touch My Body" remix instrumental as a music bed for a few minutes and fuck, that's a pretty great piece of production. rappers (not-Rick-Ross rappers) should be all over it.

R-Lez definitely has the same overachieving dork chromosome as Kanye, although I don't know if I ever would've liked Kanye much if YouTube had been around for him to broadcast his unctuous personality through before he'd even produced more than a couple hits. "Diamond Girl" is great but I think Sean Garrett is once again the horse I'm betting on in the songwriter-turned-star race in light of "Grippin'."

bobby valentino / lil wayne - your smile:
'tell me' rehash; wetters of exotic beds will be pleased. chorus hollers "eeyore!" just as i was about to put it down, so points for moxie i guess.

c-side / keyshia cole - boyfriend / girlfriend:
not quite as summer roller teen good as you want it to be, it's aight though! i'll co-sign any and all fake pretty rickies but it's keyshia bringing the breezy what does it really. milf game proper in the video too.

git fresh - booty music:
fake pretty rickies like these guys! they used to be called deepside (yes. from the step up 1 s/t INDEED) but have since changed their name for british lolz and the slim hope of def jam treating them better than atlantic. i am bored enough to rep for this song.

paula deanda - marching:
this is some noble lip-quivering stoicism all right. i like how they never lose their nerve with the beat. want to listen some more to be sure but put "funerealness" on hold plz.

r kelly - hairbraider:
al tell me if this is good, i am not in a kells mood right now.

haha i haven't listened to "Hairbraider" yet, i'll check for it tonight. is the hook like a call back to "I Wish"?

why, uh are you expecting the hairbraider to be recently deceased? i think it's like an 'in love with a braider' t-dream sort of effort.

not really into 'gripping' at all. is it making radio waves or something? i don't really know if i like how he's all whiny whilst still looking like if jeezy was your personal shopper

http://a495.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/75/l_e02fdd17a632d6f0371837206e121aa6.jpg

making small waves, I think, enough for me to randomly hear it one day without immediately knowing who it was and being engaged/impressed.

there's a whole vamp at the end of "I Wish" about braiding hair is all I meant! or maybe it was the remix, either way.

oh ok soz, i forget the remix.

i respect the fact that garrett has titled his album TURBO 919!! i probably would too tbh.

ne-yo's year of the gentleman and mario winans' love: it's only fair amusing also

hey, I'm happy as long as R&B singers stop putting their own names and/or the word "evolution" in album titles

shareefa the black dahlia oughta be like a janelle monae-style homage to hardboiled noir featuring the game on every track

can't wait til someone asks sterling simms why he called his worth the while

"well uh, basically i..."

can you guess who has titled their forthcoming debut Prom: 2088?

it's an Irish law firm!

it's Romany Malco in Too Legit: The MC Hammer Story!

no, it's O'NEAL MCKNIGHT!

http://www.onealmcknight.com/tux.jpg

really, have socks ever played such an integral role in a singer's promotional compaign?

http://www.onealmcknight.com/7.jpg

I bet a majority of kids wear New Era fitteds to their prom nowadays..

but will they eighty years from now, is the question.

I been to Metropolis, and my name is LeRoy. And I'm into white women and, you know, I drive a Cadillac and I drink moonshine. And I don't smile in pictures.

damn "diamond girl" is fucking great-- <3 those shameless timbo blurps

is it just me or has this past year or so been really good for r&b

Ryan Leslie, c/d, s/d

He's a genius, yes?

-- Tape Store, Sunday, November 11, 2007 1:12 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Link

RIP NEVER FORGET

YOU JUST MIGHT BE THE SEXIEST THING OFF IN THE CLUB
AND I'M JUST TRYING SO DAMN HARD TO GET YOU HOME

wait what about "Diamond Girl" has anything to do with Timbaland?

that little talk box noise in the verses is basically ripped shamelessly from "pony"

there's a talk box in that song? i need to listen to it later and figure out what you're even talking about.

anyone else know what i'm talking about? "diamond girl" has that same burp-like sound effect that's in "pony"

it has a bassy keyboard run but I never thought of it as a talkbox or as anything like "Pony."

Yeah it kind of acts like a bassline right after the little synth line every measure...that noise in "pony" is like the greatest thing ever and everyone knows it

"diamond girl" is ok but I like that Ryan leslie joint with Lex I think better (whoever the hell that is)

I think it is a bass actually

whatever the one in "diamond girl" sounds like the really distinct noise from "pony"-- idk what instrument it is. both are awesome either way

THE LEX

"Diamond Girl" would be so much better if it had that 4x4 house n b thing going on

yeah something halfway unique on the radio would be vastly improved by resembling everything else more

YOU TRIED TO PUT HIM IN A BOX! IT'S IMPOSSIBLE!

yeah preview way off the money

whats unique about it? A weird synth line? Like every swizz beat from the late ninetys and every timbo track from this decade and half of every polow song etc...I mean its good but Ryan leslie isnt exactly blowing my mind

it sounds the like the-dream

don't tell alex that

anyway i'm not even sure what it sounds like-- it's just a brilliant song, really simple, bucking trends by being trendless, separates itself by being a charmingly quirky. i don't know, it seems highly un-unlikable to me

brainiac dum dums bust the scientific

i mean yeah that ONE ruh-ruh froggy sound is timmish but christ as if it wasnt bad enough when you mugs claimed the-dream sounded like ginuwine upthread, knock it the fuck off already

if anything i'd say argue r-les takes strong neptunes cues on occasion (partic obv when you see him in any of his studio vids), and 'diamond girl' kind of does have a swizzy oomph, but neither is egregious of anything and neither pov is much fun carrying around

i mean yeah that ONE ruh-ruh froggy sound is timmish

that's all i was i was talking about

mug

haha if i get americans calling peeps mugs then it's all been worthwhile

http://www.zshare.net/audio/10561653cb176222/

meanwhile on rolling auteur thread 2008 this ne-yo got that neglected 1st album charm i wasnt expecting to ever hear again. lol at him coming with a secret scrub's anthem on his year of the gentleman flex, and double triple lol at suddenly excited "or maybe i paint your toenails...!!" yeeeah you go dispel those rumours son

the funny thing is did actually mean to come chop it up about r-les 'addiction' and cassie's 'official girl' version since theyre literally the only good stuffz around right now

so does leslie really have an album coming out in june

his half assed falsetto on "addiction" is kinda bad, beat is still hot. oh well. not better than "livin a lie" as far as these songs go

yeah but then that amateurishness is only gonna work in his favour in the current climate really. (also, i might go so far as to say it crucially softens the whole yuppie-with-a-laptop vibe his beats have, i dunno.)

none of the above will ever end up applying to cassie though obv cos society still be slaking its sexist thirst with lumidee's blood to this very damn day.

and yes r-les is having a selftitled album out apparently. i did read it was supposed to be called "used to be" before, and knew that would change with the quickness.

he's already had one (disappointing) album out though! before cassie was even a twinkle! anyone hear it? just right' remains fucking banger:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhMNLQFb_l4

^ fun fact: i once heard lily allen play that tune out, in a bar. what a queen move?

Would somebody care to list some good R&B albums of 2008? This thread is so single-oriented and disjointed that it's impossible for me to navigate.

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f14/snouts/ryanlezza.gif

navigate my fist patrick south!

uh n/h

nah but seriously um, i recommend cheri dennis, older heads recommend raheem devaughn, younger heads with iron robotech noize constitutions recommend danity kane, and then there's mariah and janet. which are kinda average pon the whole. and that's about it so far.

oh also j-shep recommends ray jay? (will investigate this in a minute)

the-dream came out mid-dec, so also that

"sexy can i" is garbage

we all read ray jay's magnificent interview of lies right?

ha i like sexy can i

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/04/exclusive-ray-j.html

I seen Pac the day before they left. Suge bought Snoop, Pac and Dr. Dre Rolls-Royces. I think they all caravanned.

The day he died, I seen him with Puff. I tried to say what’s up to Puff, but Puff didn’t see me. Then I seen Big and he was like, "What’s up, my n*gg*." I hugged Big and the n*gg* smelled like soap. That’s all I remember. He just smelled fresh like, "Damn, he a big n*gg* but he smell like soap."

yeah "Sexy Can I" is kind of impossible to resist or respect totally, which causes a lot of conflicted feelings.

I like the Badu album, too, though not nearly as much as the other folks on the rolling scented candles thread.

the only person more contemptible than ray j is fucking yung berg. i'm cool with all hook no verse songs as long as the hook is good and this one is not

yeah Yung Berg is despicable, although I can't muster as much hate for him on this as I did for "Sexy Lady." it's funny how after "Sexy Can I" blew up Ray J shot a slightly slicker new video for it, and I was like shit, you upgraded the video but not the guest MC?

i'm cool with all hook no verse songs as long as the hook is good and this one is not

c.f. any good chingy song

maybe yung berg smells like nice xp

hold up

kim kardashian y/n

omfg...listening to official girl. omfg. one of danja's best. this is so fucking amazing. cassie deliversssss

B-b-but the whole thing about the Badu album is that it isn't all scented candles and shit. It's mostly off-kilter funk rips and stuff.

yeah "Sexy Can I" is kind of impossible to resist or respect totally, which causes a lot of conflicted feelings.

This is otm, tho. Ray J is kind of dead to me in the wake of "One Wish", which I hate about as much as I hate "Bossy" and "Beautiful Girls" combined and tripled, but I have a hard time bringing myself to hate "Sexy Can I".

What the hell is rtc even on about upthread?

R&B albums this year (+ dec. 07, excuse my late passes) I like (in rough order of likedness):

E. Badu
Dreamer
Cheri Dennis
Miss Janet if yr nasty
MJB

c.f. any good chingy song

-- J0rdan S., Tuesday, April 15, 2008 3:38 PM (Tuesday, April 15, 2008 3:38 PM) Bookmark Link

lol oxymoron

Until Al mentioned it, I couldn't even remember what Young Berg's hit was.

back to the matter at hand? no? bah.

'one wish' was great! - "I'LL BE! OKAY! IF I! GET ONE!" - not to mention 'beautiful girls'.

gonna have to be more specific about what i'm on about upthread but if you're talking about you comparing cheri's album to cassie then i imagine it was your flagrant incorrectness? most i can work out is it has a vaguely similar rickety thin sweetness about it but as far as icy electro or whatever goes then hell no

i think he means you calling us all dum dums

I didn't say the Cheri album was "icy electro". I even specifically even said it wasn't after J0 asked me if it was, so wtf are you talking about. Most of the Cassie album isn't icy electro anyways, I was comparing them on the basis of the whole rickety thin sweetness thing.

DONT MISCONSTRUE ME BIDDLEEYOTCH!

stick with BOOCH :D

I only call people bootches on sub-boards.

'one wish' was great! - "I'LL BE! OKAY! IF I! GET ONE!"

How to tell if your goat is sick.

I just heard "Ahhh" for the first time. This is nice! Sounds like Aaliyah circa "Try Again"

That song is pretty awful throwaway.

I'm looking forward to her new album Fantasy Ride though.

"Awful"? Huh? Boring, maybe.

pretty interesting bit of an interview w/ young berg talking about how he wrote "sexy can i" and is in the studio now w/ tricky and the-dream doing shit for ciara

-----

You mentioned that you wrote “Sexy Lady” and “Sexy Can I,” how long have you been writing R&B records?

It happened when I first started messing with Junior. We used to toy around. I used to try to do R&B, but I never really got confident in myself until T-Pain and The Dream came out. I notice these niggas ain’t doing nothing but rapping with melodies. Once I got the blueprint around it, I just took off with that shit. Then “Sexy Lady” came. Now “The Business,” working with Ciara, my working with Dream and Tricky. It’s gonna be big.

How did you link up with Ciara?

I didn’t really link up with Ciara. Tricky’s an executive producer on her project or whatever. And, ya’ll know Tricky did “Umbrella” and all that stuff. Tricky’s from Chicago, but me and Tricky actually met through my mixer on my records, ’cause he mixes all of The Dream and Tricky’s stuff. My mixer was talking about, “Yo, Berg is crazy,” so we finally linked up and we getting to the money right now.

You used the Auto-Tune on a song off your album. Why?

I’m not gonna front. I’m not Chris Brown. I can’t sing like that. Pain might feel like he’s the best singer, but if he was honest, he’d be like, “I’m not the best singer. I was a rapper and I found this fucking instrument and I can sing good enough to where it doesn’t sound like shit.” But you’re not gonna catch me on “American Idol” next week…

Pain said artists need to ask for his permission to use Auto-Tune, did you ask for it?

What’s crazy about it with the whole permission thing is I had a record called “One Call Away” that I did and put the voice coder on it. This is before everybody started going nutty with it. I went to see T-Pain, ’cause I was on the Scream Tour with him…. And I went on his bus and was like, “I want you to get on this record. I was playing the record and he kinda flipped. He was like, “Damn, dawg! You sound kinda like me on this shit a little bit.” I was like, “I need you to do it.” The record never really worked out, but he was like you got my permission to do anything with that shit.

Ciara's new song "High Price" is shockingly awful (The-Dream wrote it and generally Ciara's singles are amazing.. plus I think Polow produced it.. anyway it's really weird and bad).

maybe it will grow on me

Tricky Stewart produced "High Price." But yeah, it's horrid, or at least that one-minute clip of it that's out there is. I mean, I didn't like "Oh" much the first time, let alone a weirdo semi-retread of it.

really feeling the reggae-ish track from Missy's new artist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR9E5VYagFA

yes, Jazmine Sullivan! Love her, album should be incredible (she's mentioned in the first post)

I went to the Epic Yung Berg preview yesterday (I can't be the only one who subconsciously wants to yid-ify him, calling him Youngberg mentally).

Here are my notes (since we weren't allowed to record anything, all I've got is ugly short-hand):

Berg gives brief intro. Berg believes that he is "Empowering young people to take it to the next level … keep God and all things are possible," etc.

He produced the entire album except for two tracks, and he calls this "new sound" "the Spaceship." It's all auto-tuned with a lot of echo, chime-y synth arpeggios. He's got the system up way too loud, so it sounds like shit. "The Business" is booty-call track with silly metaphor, good radio sound. Lots of compression, no dynamics. More radio than club track. He's partial to the DMX-ish shout "Hey!"

His label didn't understand "what I'm all about." "If I come from Sexy Can I to Sexy Lady, I'm gonna be the sexiest dude alive."

Do Dat There video: Big cold jam, lots of black and white, hey—those are the street drummers in front of the Art Institute! Warm, sustained bass. Sure does like that plinking toy piano. I like the instructions re: wad. Makes it officially dance track. "It was important that this came out with no co-signer. I got no co-signer, no, like Fiddy says he's cool. I'm New Wave."

"One Night" has toy piano again. Sharp bass, but mixed for shit. Supercompressed. Sure likes the posturing, spoken word interludes.

"This is the track I'm most proud of." Called "Outer Space." Phase shifting, more auto-tune. He stops the track to tell us he really sang it. It's apparent—his voice is really thin. Should have doubled it. Falls back on "Hey!", more tinkly piano. Bridge is tight. Nice spacey sound. Makes me want to get him to listen to Charles Earland.

"Manager" has more chime washes, better hook than "One Night," lots of string sweeps. Weird pimp metaphor—doesn't want to be boyfriend, just take 20% of proceeds (wonder if he knows that managers usually get 10). "They don't coordinate your do with your shoes/like I do." Way too long on bridge.

That's pretty much it, we were only there pretty briefly. For some reason, he came up to me an initiated a complicated dap-tap. He has a lot of lotion on his hands.

J Hud's first single Spotlight is pretty good, I was expecting something a bit more fun and uptempo but she sounds amazing... I think this could be a hit for her.

Robin Thicke's new single Magic is FIIIIIIREEEEEEE... continuing in the same Leon Ware/ I Want You -era Marvin sound as "Gots 2 Be Down".

so.. usher's album... kinda boring...

OMG...OTM Re: Robin Thicke

LOVING the orchestration on the Thicke tune!