funky house sceptics, let me draw your attention to this

Haha Lex I think you ARE actually posting things that are totally outside funky eg that Kingdom EP and the Benga track (and I think you are doing this deliberately in as a bit of "my genre boundaries are wider than yours" friendly one-upmanship). It's be a bit like posting a load of Stanton Warriors MP3s on a 2-step thread ten years ago.

I mean, surely we all agree that funky is essentially anchored by a particular kind of beat and everything is in flux around that basic rhythmic framework? Ie it can be anything sonically but not rhythmically.

I think the problem with a lot of funky diva vocals is that, to paraphrase Tim from some other thread I've forgotten, there's maybe a bit too much swoon at the expense of the snap. This is why Egypt rules, basically.

i didn't post the kingdom ep!! and wouldn't have posted it here anyway.

I mean, surely we all agree that funky is essentially anchored by a particular kind of beat and everything is in flux around that basic rhythmic framework? Ie it can be anything sonically but not rhythmically.

this doesn't really feel intuitively right, though i can't really think of examples as i'm much more interested in the sonix. i still think the fact that "stupid" and "katy on a mission" have different tempos is negligible compared to the many similarities - sonic, thematic, the similar vocal approaches of roses gabor and katy b to the track.

Yes but Redlight is an outlier anyway, so saying that 'Katy On A Mission' is funky because it bares some similarity to 'Stupid' doesn't hold, it's taking that one extra jump out of the genre. You're using false genre unifiers.

Themes, vocals approaches and bass noises aren't really core elements of funky so you can't use them to draw those sort of connections. There's not really any thread that connects 'Get Low', 'Can You Kiss Me There', 'Holy Ghost' and 'Heads Shoulders Knees & Toes' other than a rhythmic one.

i didn't post the kingdom ep!! and wouldn't have posted it here anyway.

This presumably an accident then?

it was a quote of someone else who had already posted it

i never really know where to post british urban music stuff any more here. like, i'd have no idea where to put goldielocks' excellent new single. but like british politics, it's something that ilx really knows how to suck the fun out of compared to IRL conversations.

lex seems to just enjoy the now-old 'oh wow everything is in so much flux how can anyone possibly KNOW where it fits?!?!' hype. hence posting kingdom in this thread when it doesnt belong, and posting dubstep like that benga track here as well. or maybe he just has tin ears.

me personally i seem to have the funnest political discussions when i'm talking to politicians i support

weird huh

Once again lots of people go out of their way to misread what I write so as to paint me as some sort of genre police officer. In fact I wrote this:

But I wouldn't suggest that someone wasn't a funky fan if they disliked Crazy Cousinz but liked stuff by (say) Fuzzy Logick, Devine Collective and Major Notes. Dubstep and funky are both broad enough - and have been for long enough - that you can pick and choose among a variety of strands.

Martin then replies to say "no no you're wrong" only to say the exact same thing back to me.

All I was actually saying is that Jon only seems to come into this thread to congratulate stuff on the grounds that it doesn't sound like 99% of the funky-which-he-dislikes. And I said that if your approach is to only like a thing to the extent that it starts to turn into something else, well, doesn't that by definition suggest you don't really like the original thing. Which is fine, but, like, why would it convince anyone in this thread to agree?

You may hate this argument but why not avoid pitfalls? everyone has parts of genres they don't care for? you can like a style but see how you could like it more. i'm far more interested in uk funky being uk funky than uk funky trying to be the worst end of r&b.

(a) what is your definition of "uk funky being uk funky"? Does it involve an absence of vocals influenced by R&B?

(b) I'd be interested to know what an actual example of "uk funky trying to be the worst end of r&b". What is "the worst end of r&b" anyway? This seems like a strawman to me.

(incidentally, Lex, while you're very quick to criticise me for being "hysterical" in this thread, I note that it's the only thread in which you'll always give a free pass to people sticking the boot into R&B)

I think the problem with a lot of funky diva vocals is that, to paraphrase Tim from some other thread I've forgotten, there's maybe a bit too much swoon at the expense of the snap. This is why Egypt rules, basically.

While this has some merit I think, the "problem with a lot of funky diva vocals" IMO is simply that the songwriting is inconsistent and not all of the vocalists are actually any good. I don't know that it needs accusations of secret pedophiliac tendencies on the part of listeners to explain it.

Should probably have pointed out that swoon/snap thing came from a discussion that was entirely unrelated to funky, think it was some 'L-Jag tries get into r&b' thread.

Need to say this: Still kinda amazed that in a thread where Jon says:

I would rather hear Cooly G singing everytime without fail, than the bland and infantile attempts at romance that seem to dominate female vocals in funky. I mean, how old are you guys - or is it just some crypto-pedo, voyeuristic pleasure you take in listening to children court each other.

... I'm the one who gets jumped on.

for the record i completely disagree with anyone dissing r&b in any way & think that r&b vocals and romantic lyrics can only be a good thing for funky or dubstep or whatever - i just wish more of the singers in question would stamp their personality on their tracks more, tear the focus away from the producers sometimes, rather than just being voices for hire. katy b seems to be doing this, which is a positive, though sadly more people here seemed to want to keep her out of the thread for doing it over a slightly different tempo.

i don't really see the point in engaging with jon.

I just assumed everyone thought that crypto-paedo comment was so ludicrous than they weren't going to dignify it with a response.

Katy B is great, absolutely, but if tearing the focus away from funky producers = doing a dubstep tune, I'm not sure what this means for funky positive or negative.

i meant tearing the focus away from the producer of the track she's on, ie benga - like "katy on a mission" isn't foremost a benga production with anyone on vocals, it's a katy b song produced by benga. if an album and actual viable solo career is in the pipeline i'm sure she'll do a ton of funky stuff, if she has a particularly important partnership going it's prob w/geeneus.

ike "katy on a mission" isn't foremost a benga production with anyone on vocals, it's a katy b song produced by benga.

is it churlish of me to suggest this is the case because the music is much more boring than "As I" and "Tell Me"?

If you mainly mean who it's billed to, well, only a handful of funky singers have had enough success to actually start meriting songs being billed to them - Miss Fire obv (it helps she produces as well), Ny, Katy B, Egypt. Farah seems to be credited with her songs as much as Screama is.

Seems to be a rule that when the songs are billed to the singer they tend to do less well, sadly e.g. Ny's "Dangerous" was brilliant but no one got behind it.

Sorry for bustin' in here. I don't really know anything about this here genre, so erm, could anyone recommend some good compilations/artists/producers I could check out, please? I would read through the thread but my computer would explode if I tried to load 2593 posts. Thanks!

The Ministry of Sound and Rinse FM funky compilations are probably your best starting point if you want an overview of the genre and the main players with the aid of actually knowing what the tracks are.

(long time reader, first time poster)

like "katy on a mission" isn't foremost a benga production with anyone on vocals, it's a katy b song produced by benga.

i don't think that's quite right. it started off as an instrumental way back last year and only recently got the vocal treatment precisely because the beat was so popular. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOKTC9tboKs

"the "problem with a lot of funky diva vocals" IMO is simply that the songwriting is inconsistent and not all of the vocalists are actually any good. I don't know that it needs accusations of secret pedophiliac tendencies on the part of listeners to explain it."

i think this is the first time tim f has ever agreed with people on this.

still dont know how man on a mission ever got popular in the first place though. it was better when it was produced by bless beats and called wearing my rolex.

The Ministry of Sound and Rinse FM funky compilations are probably your best starting point if you want an overview of the genre and the main players with the aid of actually knowing what the tracks are.

― Matt DC, Friday, 30 July 2010 13:11 (3 hours ago)
Thanks, Matt. I'll check those out.

check this out, too, it was posted upthread but its beneath the fold

i think this is the first time tim f has ever agreed with people on this.

It's a fairly uncontroversial point really. Not all vocal tunes are amazing. OH MY GOD. Indict uk funky now. But not all the tunes in any of funky's strands are amazing. Not all the tunes in any genre are amazing. (I don't go out of my way to identify for them everyone here because, well, why would I waste my time and yours?)

It's like saying "I'd listen to more house but not every house tune i've heard rocks my world, seriously this genre has real probs."

In a year that has produced so many fantastic vocal tunes I don't think some duff ones or middling ones are a serious cause for concern.

But this is the structure of complaint that everyone adopts when they want to explain their lack of greater engagement with a genre, creating this fantasy of endless parades of indistinguishable sub-standard product, but when pressed they find it difficult to name more than one or two examples.

And then, of course, when they do want to congratulate something, it's in comparison to this fantasy of indentikit bad product.

the trouble with referring to a genre's "standards" is that everyone seems to have different ones (some like the r&b vox, some don't, some like radio MCs, some don't &c &c).

I'm going back to this because again it was a misreading of what I wrote that kinda can help me tease out my position on all of this: I didn't refer to the term "standard" in the sense of benchmark of quality, but rather "standard" as a put-down, i.e. typical, generic, unadventurous. My issue with this approach to thinking about genre (that is, setting up some notion of what is generic and then measuring the distance of any particular track from the generic in order to assess its worth) is, in line with my point above, the fact that it involves setting up a notion of the generic before you've examined it enough to work out what actually is generic in the negative sense rather than "generic" in the sense of "it sounds like its genre". e.g. when Martin talks about "the worst end of R&B", this is premised on the assumption that you simply can dismiss a significant minority of R&B without examination.

Like, I think Miss Fire is far and away the best diva in funky at this point - Farah might beat her ultimately but hasn't done enough - because of the way in which she always manages to make a certain softness and restraint sound like restraint, like she's brushing the tips of your ears with her vocals rather than unleashing the full onslaught so that you the listener will go to her. There's a beckoning, "come hither" vibe to her vocals which I think is pretty intoxicating. Meanwhile that slightly nasal quality to her vocals gives them a very personable quality, letting her sound unrehearsed (in a good sense) even when she's deploying laser-precision micro-melisma.

Youtube links:

Miss Fire - It's You

Miss Fire - Falling (DJ Naughty Remix)

Miss Fire - Take Off Your Clothes

Barber Bizzle ft. Miss Fire - Do You Feel The Same

Digital Dubstar ft. Miss Fire - Can't Say No

But Miss Fire's attractions simply won't emerge if you're framing this in terms of "generic R&B vocals vs Cooly G." Those kinda contrasts are gonna prevent you from getting to the heart of what is interesting about Cooly G as much as any R&B-influenced funky.

miss fire is hilariously grumpy on twitter. one of my fav things by her is that random "writer's block" tune she uploaded a while back. i don't think any of her songs really work as songs though.

falling is good. the rest though are alright enough but have the same problems as a lot of funky vocals - the melodies just sound too tightly squeezed into the beats and barely have room to breathe. or maybe theyre just not that strong to begin with. sound like they were made up and recorded in about 30 mins. (was gonna say 10 but that would be a bit harsh).

dear titchy

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

like i mean sorry to be militarizing tim's subconscious here but the self-produced 'take off your clothes' knocks any cooly g into a cocked hat all day long. deal with it cloth ears.

oh choke on a fucking testicle you dumb fuck. where have i been bigging up cooly g?

oh yeah "take off your clothes" is brilliant.

this is another great miss fire vocal (and one of the best songs she's done) -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7rql3ihGtk

thats her best one.

"i don't really see the point in engaging with jon."

this is a smart approach. not just for jon either.

i'll concede it's a nice bit of trolling but you guys are aware 'part time lover' isn't particularly relevant to this discussion right.

remarkably self-aware of you to say so btw titch.

i would ask why "part time lover" isn't relevant but i'm not sure i care what the funky police are finding fault with this time

i prefer it to pretty much all her other stuff, which i just like

i knew you'd say that. at this point i'm not sure if i have the strength to chalk it up to anything more than a "lady if you have to ask" sitch tbh.

hey guys i just checked dissensus btw and it seems we are all devaluing this thread as a useful resource ;_;

rtc just shut that cakehole. youre fucking insufferable.

lex, its its more like acoustic funky, like funky gone live. kind of like an mj cole-y version of it. either way, who cares, its still her best song.

like they'd know about useful resources

relistening to those miss fires, "can't say no" is wicked too (and also seems to have been quietly slipped on to itunes), the "my honey honey, my baby boo" hook of "falling" is fab but the rest of the track spends too much time futzing around doing nothing, "do you feel the same" is totally underdone, it feels ad libbed. "part time lover" is better than all except perhaps "can't say no".

actually "do you feel the same" her vocal strategy is a lot closer to cooly g than anything else.

explain that last one for the people please lex.

the vocal seems more of a vaguely floating ad-libbed decoration than a song

ah yes of course the jazzy scat of the dub auteurette, how did i not see that.

You lot!!!!
What is 'Roska is suppressing a more colourful blah blah in favour money making lieu' all about?
Hang on I get you I saw Roska chartering a helicopter to take him to his latest festival show, he's hanging out with Jay Z and Timbaland now.....comparing tracks such as Redlight and Roses Gabors 'Stupid' to tunes by Miss Fire is also plain 'STUPID'. Redlight's sound is honed and slick and is the sound of an experienced music maker, Miss Fire's tracks are basically raw demos with a lot of potential - can't you hear this? Some of the songwriting on UK Funky tracks is poor? Of course it is, some of it is so raw, they are probably recording half the vocal into the laptop via the laptop mic....
As for the constant quest to to define what UK Funky is, this makes me laugh no end. UK Funky is straight up underground, UK music. For some i.e Lil Silva/Marcus Nasty it's the sound of grime kids discovering the house music of Kenny Dope, Karizma and beyond, it's a phrase coined when these people heard stuff like Bugz In The Attic's remix of Amy Winehouse, In My Bed and starting saying stuff like 'this is like some kind of funky house music'......it's real simple folks, it's certainly not a science...

so anwyay i was thinking if jess got to wield the banhammer then i'm totally due a go by now right...?

Tim F is very impressive at objectifying his own taste. We could all learn from him.

His lapdogs rtc and titchy however!! jeeez - amusing to see them scrapping to see who gets to snuggle into Tim's warm, and well argued embrace.

Also, rtc, you have the most insufferable, smug demeanour I've ever witnessed online. Wow!

The notion of titchy as my lapdog makes me feel kinda bad for him. Animal cruelty.

man how does that old judge a man by his foes thing work again. think i mightve racked up a high score today.