Rolling R&B Thread 2012

Oh my god it's R&B mixtape Hanukkah! So many new pretty good mixtapes this week I can't keep up with all of them! This is a great problem to have, obviously. Excited to play catchup.

Here's what we got, if y'all wanna check some of them out and help me out with recs:

Chantel - Back in the Day: Brandy/Aaliyah-ish, sounds nice at first graze
Mateo - Suite 823: Sounds like dude's best work yet, but will that be enough to make people care about him?
Lucille Ghatti - High Grade: Outsider, Jhene-esque stuff that doesn't hide behind fogginess
Vaughn Anthony - Life of a Player: John Legend's beefcake brother; he's fun in a Bobby V way
I/O - Isolation: Maybe Fortebowie-ish? Only better? I dunno, digging it

And some YouTubes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNKH9fL7Ekw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av4iAallwbQ

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

And oh my lord!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56wb27z8kPo

Need to listen to all of these, but finally listening to K. Michelle's 0 Fucks Given, and it's a mixed bag but there's still a lot of promise here. Even the first track, 'U Gonna Learn Today' is 100% her. Even at the most shambolic, she's got a clearly defined persona and that goes a long way.

think i saw c&d recently refer to her as "hoodrat lounge singer k michelle", which naturally i very much enjoyed

she's not even entertainingly ratchet tho anyway

Oh my god it's R&B mixtape Hanukkah! So many new pretty good mixtapes this week I can't keep up with all of them! This is a great problem to have, obviously. Excited to play catchup.

am hearing this delivered in increasingly sober tones followed by a long pause and single gunshot sound

lmao

hahaha

mateo song is really good

lol the guy at the beginning of that chantel song is really going for timbaland on "are you that somebody" huh

isn't "suite 823" the name of that fader blog

ha, sorry for the over the top enthusiasm; I'd been anticipating some of these mixtapes for a while. The Lucille Ghatti is sounding more to me like the gem of the bunch to me; it's so spry and sexy and has so much fun playing with expectations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crrOl0egI00

Have we talked about the new Ne-Yo? Between 'Lazy Love' which was a solid [7] in his comfort zone, and this - which isn't a Dawn Richard track or anything, but shows that he still knows how to do dance/R&B better than most people - I'm almost convinced that the new record is going to be worth paying attention to.

After Year of the Gentleman, Libra Scale was so disappointing but... is it wrong to anticipate that we might get some gems from the r.e.d. album or whatever it's called?

eh

fair enough. :/

yeah recycling the title of the song that put him on the map is pretty eyebrow-raising, but i agree that Ne-Yo deserves a lot more leeway in leaning into dance than most (ymmv but "Closer" and "Give Me Everything" were both in my top 10 for the years they came out, and i like this a lot too).

:(

as much as I hate to say it, "Let's Go" >

New Jhené produced by FIsticuffs <3 <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivTgMNqZc80

I like this more than anything on her last mixtape. More artists should work with Fisticuffs.

She is too pretty to be an effective J-horror ghost, though.

I like this more than anything on her last mixtape. More artists should work with Fisticuffs.

― Evan R, Thursday, August 9, 2012 3:49 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

[tasteless chris brown joke]

heh

http://www.soulculture.co.uk/music-blog/newmusic/free-downloads/rochelle-jordan-pressure-free-album-stream-download/#axzz23e4jFXEY

feeling this rochelle jordan album (free d/l) a lot - kind of airy, spacious, dreamy stuff that's a bit goapele, a bit jhené aiko but with that amel larrieux sense of physicality that prevents it from being as inconsequential as aiko

did anyone else hear the elle varner album? i quite like it on one listen but...she and jade alston have really similar voices and i can't help but think that whenever i want to hear it i'll end up going to alston.

oh and there was some nice stuff on the jeremih mixtape but maybe my expectations were too high for that track specifically, i was a bit underwhelmed by "773 love"

The Rochelle Jordan album was a little uneventful for my tastes.

I can only handle the Elle Varner album in bits and pieces; the Macy Gray-ness of her voice makes it a small-doses only proposition. Songs are OK, but a little on the cutesy end. She teases cutting lose but never does

JHENE AIKO "3:16AM" looks and sounds like it belongs on an episode of Teen Wolf.

(http://www.zzstream.com/2011/07/teen-wolf-season-1-episode-8-lunatic.html)

Varner LP is so consistently great-sounding that i'm actually warming to her over-the-top vocals (Macy Gray-ness is an odd description, though)

The Jeremih mixtape owns my world.

ships can u expand on "great-sounding"

ima need more if you're to be trusted on this

Varner is in my long "stuff Andy K likes so I'll assume it's good" list.

haha

kinda lolling at this 'sound proof room' beat on the varner, sounds like the heatmakerz quickly ran in to mess with it while the og producers back was turned

ohh wait is andrew "pop" wansel going to be the son of...... yep

idk how i feel about that

production is just dope as fuck is all i mean -- can't say much in detail on one listen but if it was, like, jazmine sullivan or someone that good on vox it'd be like album of the year material

I was crushing hard on varner's mixtape

JB3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzIPPKPtAJ8

This Kingdom edit of Put It Down that removes Chris Brown from the track is making me pretty happy right now:

http://www.hulkshare.com/d9r6gcxj7hfk

<3 kingdom

New Trey songz: way too much moisture on the opening tracks.

~~~~~~~~~~~splash~~~~~~~~~~

So why isn't there even a tracklist or an album cover for Love IV MMXII yet?

cause the single ain't doing shit and it got pushed back to Neveruary?

Right. But it's still a bit too late in the day for them to be hoping for charting solo singles from Terius. From what I've seen the album has been finished for a while, so just letting it sit there isn't gonna help.

which is how this story has played out dozens of times before, yes.

new Dwele album is nice.

Hot damn, there's a new Dwele album?

The new Trey Songz is a mixed bag, some nice stuff but some of his gaudiest stuff, too. A big step down from PP&P.

trey songz spending so much of the new album trying to be r kelly was kinda surprising

like r kelly circa tp2 not r kelly now