ROLLING ILX R&B LISTENING CLUB: Join in! All ILXors and Lurkers Welcome! NEW PICKS EVERY MONDAY!

i'm real busy w/ finals this week but i've def gonna download fanmail -- i'll prob be a week behind in talking about it but i'm really really excited about it

& the other two, hopefully, but i'm kinda lazy

maybe i went in the wrong order. fanmail is one of the best albums ever imo and mya is an absolute must-hear, the truth hurts is just an enjoyable record i think should be remembered as more than lol rakim.

You've never heard fanmail rev?

nope, hated "No Scrubs" and "Unpretty" at the time and still never particularly loved any of the singles from it. as I said on the other thread, all that post-timbo stuff never really did it for me.

whoa what the fuck

this is some real O_O watergate ish to me

THE REV DOES NOT DIG "NO SCRUBS"?? LITERALLY THE BEST SONG EVER

^^^^this

sorry, all that stuff just totally leaves me cold. i'm still just now warming to destiny's child. <3 CrazySexyCool (and mid-90s r&b in general) forever tho

i was listening to "no scrubs" this weekend and i was almost brought to tears (for various reasons)

I think this is a big couple-years-difference thing. When I was first getting to love r&b all of it was very warm-sounding and when it hard-shifted the other direction to very cold sounds in the late-90s I just couldn't fuck with it anymore, hence me starting to become a big ol' rap nerd around that time.

I just really did not like r&b around that time period.

rev don't you even like "silly ho"????

can second both fanmail (i prefer crazysexycool but fanmail has very high highs indeed) and fear of flying (maybe i prefer moodring? gonna have to relisten). never did get round to the truth hurts album though, even if "addictive" is an all-time classic for me. "he turns my pages" <3

idk if it really shifted so suddenly - there's lots of turn-of-the-century timbo stuff that i'd certainly describe as warm, like destiny's child's "say my name" or aaliyah's "one in a million"

From about 99-03 I pretty much only listened to rap other than what I heard on the radio/TV.

xp: yeah, I like "Silly Ho" just fine (def. my favorite Fanmail single), but it always seemed kind of minor to me

lex: both those songs are super-chilly imo

I've only been able to enjoy "Say My Name" in the past year or two. liked "One in a Million" alright at the time, but not nearly as much as "If Your Girl Only Knew" or "Pony", but it has since become a favorite

metallic/cold r&b from that era is such my shit

silly ho is so good

it might be just my memory of them as summer jams - they're not lush and all-embracing like mid-90s r&b, but they're so languid and sun-dazed to me.

i mean stuff like "silly ho" and "addictive", totally cold as ice, yeah

languid and sun-dazed to me.

see, I get very much the opposite out of them

I should point out that both "Say My Name" and "One in a Million" were hits during winters

for the first time ever, then, bless the stupid time-lag between US and UK releases

i'm with rev, always hated "No Scrubs." i remember hearing it on the radio for months before knowing who it was and being disappointed that TLC had come back with something so generic that i couldn't recognize it as them right off the bat. "Silly Ho" is incredible, though.

ftr, I do not hate "No Scrubs" anymore, I just don't love it either

scrub is a poster that don't get no love from me

I thought the Sporty Thievz answer sibg was wat lulz at the time tbh

song was way*

See I don't really connect FanMail with that cold metallic sound. I mean sure parts of it are (the opening track I guess must throw people off) but it's v. much post-One In A Million (96?) instead of being just another late90s/early00s timbo cold futuristic sound.

And anyway, I don't know how One In A Million (both song and album) can't be seen as anything other than a waaarm summer album? It's crickets (I never hear these shits at any time but when its hot) and Marvin Gaye party tunes and aww hell... it's just like a big hug before timb really went all properly futuristic?

Or am I the only one who sees a split between lol sampling baby sounds and U CANT RESIST FUTURE SOUND MOTHERFUCKER CHANGING THIS GENRE FOREVER

"Unpretty" leaves/left me cold, and "Red Light Special" >>>>>>>> "No Scrubs"

Fanmail is reeeeeeally frontloaded.

Aw come on, the second half has Dear Lie, Automatic and My Life.

Sorry I didn't mean Automatic, all though it's still cool, I meant Lovesick. It's the best break on the album imo.

Timbo circa-One in a Million is pretty damn spartan compared to most r&b at the time

"Red Light Special" >>>>>>>> "No Scrubs"

^^^this, along with pretty much every other song on CrazySexyCool, except maybe like "Switch" or something, but that's still more fun in a kind of failed Salt-n-Pepa jam way

oh and the "If I Was Your Girlfriend" cover

theres over a thousand ways to communicate in our world today

i feel bad that the subject line still has my records in it but my mod req board request was ignored, maybe if forks or any other mod who looks at this thread wants to just take the artist names out and put "rolling" in the title that'd be cool

on it

thx bro

WEEK FOUR:

These three are perhaps a bit overly obvious; rather than aiming for the obscure, I shot for three albums that have brought me continuous pleasure from the moment I first heard them (and, not coincidentally, that show up early in an artist alphabetical search on itunes). For those who have bumped these albums to death and back, go back and give em one more spin. For those who have NOT heard any of these, goddamn are you in for a treat.
Please feel free to post Spotify/streaming links to supplement.

1: Prince – The Love Symbol Album (1992)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v67/ecnirp2004/Prince/LoveSymbol92.jpg

Pretty much equally spectacular and corny from front to back. High points include:
- ‘My Name Is Prince’ – Self referential in every way; who but Prince would have the balls to interpolate his first hit into an album kickoff in which he announces his new name by announcing his old name?
- The underrated gently affectionate jams ‘Love 2 the 9s’ ‘The Morning Papers’ and ‘Sweet Baby’
- The slow-churned reggae of ‘Blue Light’ featuring the timeless line of I’ll be/ a hundred and seventeen/you’ll be still sayin’ “Baby, not tonight”
- Wonky to the point of near self-parody nerd dancefunk classics ‘Sexy MF’, ‘The Max’, ‘Wanna Melt With U’, ‘The Continental’, ‘The Sacrifice of Victor’
- Genuinely beautiful ballads ‘And God Created Woman’ , ‘Damn U’ and ‘7’
All this sandwiched in a batty storyline told in segues wherein intrepid, unethical reporter Kirstie Alley (?!?) stalks our hero through the labyrinth of his complex public and artistic persona. It’s a definite top ten purple album pick and one that I find myself returning to at least once a year.

2: Allen Toussaint – Southern Nights (1975)
http://991.com/newGallery/Allen-Toussaint-Southern-Nights-432295.jpg

Dad used to play this around the house constantly while I was growing up and it soaked into my brain and lay there for maybe a decade or two until I had the good fortune to see Toussaint play about twenty times during a residency at a club I was working at. He played every track on this seminal album a few times (though I had to specifically request ‘Worldwide’) and I feel blessed every time I get to return to Southern Nights. Many of the songs on here, title track included, have been covered to death but nothing compares to the original. The music is wonderfully crafted, deeply funky, heartfelt and amazingly performed by what amounts to a 70’s all-star New Orleans superband. If you’re new to this one, I recommend starting with ‘Country John’ (swamp rat Scott-Heron-esque), ‘You Will Not Lose’ (truly vast psychedelic uplift) and the indispensible diptych of ‘Last Train’ and the aforementioned ‘Worldwide’.

3: Anthony Hamilton – Comin’ From Where I’m From (2003)
http://image.lyricspond.com/image/a/artist-anthony-hamilton/album-comin-from-where-im-from/cd-cover.jpg

Is it possible for a platinum album to be underappreciated? Or an artist this universally known to fly under the radar? Perhaps the clear debt Hamilton owes to his unassailable soul ancestors makes him seem easier to disregard? Or that the inevitable weaker half of all his LPs tend to blend together? Whatever: I’m hard pressed to name five better current vocalists with the chops of Hamilton and Comin’ From Where I’m From is as strong a collection of his talents as I’ve yet heard. Good starts for the neophyte: the title cut, ‘Mama Knew Love’, ‘Cornbread Fish and Collard Greens’, ‘Lucille’, ‘Float’ and ‘I’m A Mess’

that train whistle harmony that Hamilton multitracks around 2:31 on Mama Knew Love is one of my favorite musical sounds of all time

oooh, i always meant to listen to that hamilton album and then... forgot it existed.

Hamilton spotify

other two aren't on there unless the prince album is and i just can't search the symbol.

i heard the love symbol album in a friend's car exactly once ten years ago and can STILL remember how "the morning papers" goes, always meant to pick up that album.

Prince's stuff simply isn't available to stream afaik; he's very adamant about maintaining control of his image on the internet and is fast to litigate.

Ha, you can get most Prince albums on Spotify! Just not ones where you have to search squiggy lines to get to it.

oh yeah? must be a uk/us thing cuz he's a real online nazi out here.

incidentally, the acknowledged title of that album is "love symbol", not O[-+-> or anything.