Rolling R&B Thread 2007

"He didn't really come with anything for me in the direction we were going in. We got that 'How Do I Breathe' song, which is more like the style of writing that you would hear from Ne-Yo," Mario told SOHH exclusively.

this guy doesnt just look retarded huh

ouch!

I went to the Scream Tour when it came here a few months ago, and Mario was billed to perform, but instead he came out at the beginning of the show to announce that he wouldn't be performing. Ever since then I've regarded him as an enigma.

i quite liked his brief artistic struggle trying to decide whether he should become 'mario barrett'!

also hold on, i've got this mario song here called "what is it gonna be" and nonwithstanding the obv stargate beat the opening line is

"i think prince might have said it best / when he said the beautiful ones, they hurt you every time"

and if that isnt neyo's corny-ass handiwork then i will eat every hat i've ever laid eyes on. oh well.

anyway yeah i had thought 'how do i breathe' only sounded familiar cos it's a total rip-off, but if theyve been holding it back then it's probly been timed just right nostalgia-wise. everything else i've heard apart from 'kryptonite' has been rubbish. especially the neptunes one where it seems like pharrell's trying to corrupt him like he did omarion on 'touch'.

"Touch" is the best thing Omarion's done.

Reading todays posts on this thread makes me realize I'm like a month behind everyone else.

Re: "Touch": All middle eight & pillow talk + cool progression = awesome

The fact that "Anonymous" has become a hit and "Wonder Woman" hasn't is fucking criminal.

I don't really think either is much of a hit yet, they both still seem to be climbing the charts. "Anonymous" is higher now but I've heard "Wonder Woman" a lot more, for some reason. I still can't get my head around "Wonder Woman," it seems like kind of a mess.

Agreed on "Touch," though. I despised it at first and then grew to love it.

Fantasia's "When I See U" might've just become my favorite R&B single of the year so far.

"having said that, noting that more and more people expect FX to validate moaning n groaning and zero actual songwriting is fair game. it's pretty much my whole beef with bobby v."

Yeah this is what I meant. What I like about "Rearview (riding)" is that it's the first Bobby song apart from the three big singles on the first album to do fx X songwriting properly.

rtc you're probably right about the desperation involved in championing this stuff. In my defence I've always loved this style even before it was a style as such. It's def. not a radical new thing.

Hmmm. "Anonymous" is getting quite a bit of airplay here, whereas I haven't heard "Wonder Woman" out at all. I think some of the messiness is what I like about it. There's a lot going on.

Anyone else liking T-Pain & Akon's "Bartender"? I'm actually looking forward to the T-Pain album, (which I haven't really heard anything about) amazingly enough.

ahh fantasia's album is another one i kept meaning to get around to - i suspect it's been totally underrated. (dunno what i've based that on tbh)

'touch' worked in reverse 4 me; seduced at first, but it's just a nasty little song really! pharrell at his sleazy worst.

t-pain i think about a lot. it's easy (too easy) to clown an ugly little electro-squealing piggy, and he sure knows it, so it makes for an interesting relationship. can't be bovd to go any deeper than that now. 'bartender' should feel cuter than it does tho, wdnt u say.

http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/I/515X7zuzq5L._AA240_.jpg

or should i say FANTASIA JAXX

yeah even though I don't really care for his solo singles, I might check out T-Pain's album just on the strength of loving his increasingly weird remix cameos. if his label lets him wild out a little on the deep cuts he could end up with a really interesting album.

did you ever hear his first? i havent revisited for a while, but i liked it a lot. i guess my thing with him is you get the impression he's thinking ok he's ugly, ok his voice is serviceable at best, ok he'll never be anyone's star, but maybe if he makes a leering ass out of himself, ramps up the vocoder and KEEPS THOSE SHADES ON someone will get round to feeling his lovely songcraft and admirable production skills one day. it's almost touching that he ended up finding akon.

yeah, T-Pain totally has an insecure, self-deprecating thing going on, I really felt for the guy when he did that interview with MTV about the song with Bow Wow: "For him to be calling me, he could have called anybody. He could have called Akon! But he called the dude that everybody says looks like the neighborhood weed man. Everybody is dissing me, they don't like my music, they don't like how I look, 'he can't sing,' and Bow called that person? You can't imagine how that feels." poor sad T-Panda :(

haha wow i never imagined he was that depressed!! i dont even make music and i still have to send bow wow to voicemail.

also if you look at the way the singles have dropped - 'in luv with a stripper' pretty much only runs with the same loserish thing 'i'm sprung' had, and now 'bartender' follows 'buy u a drank'. say what u want about canny marketing, but there's so much more to t-pain on that album for him to be reducing himself to a gimmick all the time. like even bloody 'dance floor', the biggest fruitiest one note sell-out track ever (erm i think catchdubs likened it to fatboy slim) and he's trying to say it's an album track? no way was it an album track when he was making it in the studio.

i can't fathom why he hasnt done any outside productions. maybe yeah, no one's asking him :(

this deserved a bit of shine last year too i think

New Keyshia Cole single, samples Mtume, features Missy and Lil Kim:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/196836570fe3a4/

I dunno what I think of it yet...

RTC thank you so much for recommending the Polow Da Don remix of "Get Up" BTW.

thought you might find it handy for wanderlust pt2 innit!

seriously, if it hadntve appeared randomly in january, billed as a remix to a single everyone knew, then people would be going ape. they ought to have been anyway - truly, it is a stupendous thing.

polow-wise kelly r's 'like this' remains beyond brilliant. wake up world! you gotta rep for kelly, always:

http://www.teenhollywood.com/d.asp?r=149842

Singer Kelly Rowland is harbouring a crush on Pirates Of The Caribbean star Orlando Bloom.

The former Destiny's Child singer is a big fan of the blockbuster movie franchise but insists she prefers Bloom over his hunky co-star Johnny Depp.

She says, "I think Orlando Bloom is the most beautiful man in the world! In Pirates Of The Caribbean, with that dirt on his face... that's hot."

the crazy bitch!!

Yeah, the "Get Up" remix really is an amazing track, I still hear it now and again on the late night slow jam radio sets. I think it got overshadowed by the "Promise" remix coming out at almost the exact same time.

oh also check out the random new mix of 'green light' as well, a poor man's 'fallen rmx'! but with young buck on the amen break! i especially like how it seems to ramp up the blatant amerie-baiting of the original just that bit further.

-- r|t|c, Wednesday, April 18, 2007 2:10 AM

this is still worth bothering to hear, as remixes go.

I think what gives Polow the edge with this stuff is how heavy (almost clunky) his beats are in spite of swaddling them in tearjerking synth cumulus. It makes it all very much more emotional, like, the stakes become really high or something! Who would have thought "Get Up" would sound so wracked and bittersweet (big kudos to Ciara here too, she sounds great)? Distant distant relative of the old Trackmasters remixes I guess, although it's not just the name that makes me think of Paul Poli as well.

(conversely, the precise problem with a lot of the candyfluff timbaland/tim & bob style stuff is that the stakes don't seem high enough, the utopian glint of the music and the vocals (cos they're all perfect loverboy vocals) feels too easily attained and thus not worth much. Sometimes you gotta work hard for it. Interesting then to work out why, of the recent stuff, what does work works - "Rearview (Ridin)" is slow and dark in the vein of "Tell Me", but i have no idea with Lloyd's "You", it's just too too good I guess)

Alright, more thoughts on "Wonder Woman" vs "Anonymous".

I think "Wonder Woman" has what you're talking about, Tim. It's very dark and unhappy-sounding. Forboding, almost, a bit less slick than the other (more popular) recent Timbo+R&B dude singles of late. Trey completely tries to oversell it; there's no reason "Wonder Woman" should be menacing, but he has to bring out this unnecessarily masculine tone (which surprised me. The stuff I'd heard from him before had him sounding very thin) that doesn't really fit the song. But that actually ends up working in his favor, as the voice ends up adding to the general darkness, and thus ups the stakes.

"Anonymous" on the other hand, has Valentino acting like a big, giant puss, and Timbo's production does nothing to toughen him up. Maybe, unlike Trey, Bobby has nothing to react against, no instigator to tell him to be a man, no stakes. Also, no tune, but that's a seperate problem.

Moving along, "Get Up" remix pwns all, we hold these truths to be self-evident, etc.

And WTF is this? Some song that jacks "Stand By Me" and replaces Ben E. King with some Fakon dude, (he even mentions that he went to jail!) who sounds like he's just singing through his nose to sound African or whatever, singing the word "suicidal" over and over. Oh, fuck! You who he sounds like? The "Fuck You, I Don't Want You Back" guy. Disgusting. Anyway, this is easily the worst thing on the radio right now.

You got me suicidal... suicidal... SUICIDALLLLLL

ok so i don't really have anything to say, or rather can be bovd to think anything thru, it's just that all the other threads on this fuckass board make my eyes bleed. someone talk.

eamon! hating on eamon is 4bidden, for "i love them hoes" is an alltime classic. it takes too much effort to hate on sean kingston - this is how you know you love it really, you slags.

(i seriously didnt think the world could manage a more disgusting white dude than scotty storch, but jr rotem take a bow! also at least with storch you feel he could make a good beat if he wanted to)

well done lance bass for making a new career for himself as part of the runners though.

is it just 'so sick' you hate rtc, or 'hey hey hey' as well?

well first of all i should say, people always be taking my hate so literal. there are only three songs i definitely, unquestionably HAAAATE this year and they are: 'give it to me', 'girlfriend', and 'we taking over'. and mainly i say that cos those are songs that people really really like, so an opinion is all too necessary. everything else is not worth the effort to feel strongly about and so therefore are also up 4 grabs for future changing of mind. they also come in handy for poking fun at other people as and when, obv.

sooo anyway let's listen to natasha's oeuvre again. not like i'm gonna hear them on the radio or anything. 'so sick', here we go

beat not bad in itself, but a bit passe these days. needs someone exciti- guhhhh hello the clipse. wack by default. and now AHHH LORD WHAT A HIDEOUS SOUND NATASHA MAKES. chorus is ok tho, and i like the scratches and why-why-why stutters, and the smooth breakdown - maximal nods making the minimal more severe. so it seems to have a certitide that it knows what its doing, yet not enough so that you find out by yrself like kelly r's 'like this'. this is a writer's record, nonexistent without some sort of championing, a revealing. this is what's playing when nails are getting did at the critical salon. harsh right?

'hey hey hey' i've come to ummm not like, but lets say value for its blahzay inconsequential vibe - not many tunes around have this as standard. perhaps this is it being bubblegum, or whatever.

quickly re the pixelcloudz debate above (good work all) - the idea of unconvincing loverboys sounds about right to me, but perhaps also what this is about is a clash of new and old modes of male rnb posturing; the genius of polow's 'get up' mix lies maybe not in the bigness of the beat (pillow the don) but in one simple line: "FREAK ME BABY", instantly transporting you to the 90s, when sexy was just sex and a million 4fuckingreal bad boys in the vein of dru hill, jodeci, blackstreet prowled the earth straining to tell you just that. ie when things were at stake!

so yeah 'wonder woman' does have something of that, though the glower happens everywhere but in the gimmick wonky evil sound bit; it's in the lowslung motorbiker guitar ('if yr girl only knew' steez), and especially in the staccato ice shard chorus, all mean and sharp, morphing soft-serve trey into a new sisqo - this oughtve been his comeback single, or ginuwine's, but really i guess theyre too old and done to seduce like young uns again. who else then is a bad enough dude to save male rnb? ne-yo's too insecure, usher's marrying his mother apparently, timberlake nahhhh, while all these other new dudes are candyfloss. really as great as lloyd's been this year it's still kinda a shame he had to lose that cold gangsta cherub persona along the way, cos even tho he remains a funny looking little bugger he's all i can think of. DEEP ON A CREEP FIFTY SONGS TUCKED UNDER THE um.... somethiiiing

(srsly what is lloyd saying there, chrome, brome? the lyric sites say 'prone' but then again they also say "Stay down for whatever forever hustle with my mystic hoes"!! mystic hoes!!!!!)

My unflattering comparison for Sean Kingston was a horrific amalgam of T-Pain and the guy from Gym Class Heroes, but you're right, Eamon kinda fits too.

No idea what Lloyd's saying on "Forever" but I love that song. 50 songs tucked under the pwn?

Hello, Sean Kingston. I am The Reverend, your mortal enemy. I will not rest until you are lying face down in a pool of your own blood. Be warned.

You make me homicidal, homicidal, homicidal.....

The only possible enjoyment I think I could derive from that song is if someone, urged by the many repetitions of the word "suicidal", actually did commit suicide and Sean Kingston gets sued for every last penny he makes off this bullshit, but that enjoyment would still be weighed down by the knowledge that someone died. Unless, of course, that person was me, which I really wouldn't rule out at all. Worst single of the decade is probably a bit hyperbolic, so I'll just settle for worst of '07.

Mystic Hoes!

My new band name.

rtc, now that you mention it, "Wonder Woman" does sound a lot like a Ginuwine song. I wish they (Ginuwine/Timbaland) would collaborate again, most of these random Omarion/Trey Songz/Valentino one-shots feel like Gin Lumpkin stand-inism.

Natasha is atrocious. If your going to squeak, please at least squeak in multiple notes, kthxbye.

Lloyd... I really like "Get It Shawty", hated "Southside", and don't care about "You" either way. Is it worth my time tracking down more of his stuff?

well whatever he's actually saying i'd always assumed lloyd was basically singing about erm, having 50 songs available to listen to when he's in his car? but now i think about it, 50 songs?! that's only like a 4cd changer dude. oh well.

just remembered this one tune for u&k submittal to pixelcloudz canon; i taped it off rashad morgan's myspace last year - he's signed to ti's label, and is sorta like the rnb variation of him in the same way young dro is the big bouncy miu miu to ti's prada (haha christ) - and it's the epitome of the 90s sly slowjam realness i mightve been trying to talk about. the production almost reminds me of king britt or something! - but in any case at least wait for the totally wicked jerky breakdown at the end. google says it was a minor detroit radio hit before he broke big with the much nastier but also quite hypnotic 'tell em what they wanna hear'. check it:

'just lay'

considering that R. Kelly is the first/only 2007 R&B album I've bought (although I'll get Amerie whenever it drops stateside), I should probably ask what I've been missing. should I be looking into the Lloyd or Bobby V. or Rhianna or Tank or Ne-Yo or Musiq or Sunshine Anderson even if I didn't like the singles from any of those albums?

not the rihanna.

every lloyd song i've heard off street love begins by underwhelming me for approx 2 minutes, and then unexpectedly seducing me by the close - and then i listen to it again and pay more attn from the start, and it's still underwhelming-then-seducing! almost like the real structure is gradual build to a pretty (pixelcloudy!) intensity.

apart from 'get it shawty' which is one of the most amazing things i've heard this year. funny how the missy verse which sounded so rote on 'i'm really hot' works so well on it.

i will still defend natasha, i know she is a brat who is being obnoxiously squeaky just cos she can but it's not a million miles from lil' mama's galumphing one-cadence rap, and i find natasha herself immensely endearing, and her weird weird snaky dancing very riveting.

really feeling keyshia cole's 'let it go'

RTC, is "We Taking Over" even worth hating on, really?

It's kind of funny how Akon is drafted in for such a dread-laden (or "dread-laden") sub-Wyclef chorus. It's like
"You know I'm from Africa, right?"
"Is that one or two islands over from Jamaica?"
"..."

Yeah, he is totally doing the Wyclef howl, there, but the song has grown on me.

My enjoyment of "We Takin' Over" is completely in spite of Akon's presence (I usualy don't mind him, but that chorus really is awful). And it's not even so much anyone's verses that are great as it is what the beat does underneath them, the bells that come in during Rick Ross's verse, the dramatic beat drop and build up from Baby to Wayne, etc. I didn't like a whole lot of the TimbaHandz hits, but based on that song I'm convinced that Danja is brilliant on his own.

Rihanna's album is totally worth it...very little filler and lots of potential singles. I'm excited to pick up a physical copy tomorrow.

Speaking of, t/s: Umbrella with Lil Mama vs. Umbrella with Jay-Z vs. Umbrella - on piano

(ok, the latter doesn't have much of a chance, but it really shows how beautiful the song itself is)

Re "We Taking Over": I do like the choirs in the background. But that's mainly because choirs in the background is one of those never-fail "break glass in case of emergency" kind of tricks. Wayne's verse is good too.

i had no idea 'we taking over' was hated on so.

I don't hate it. It didn't strike me as the kind of track one would have strong feelings about.