Rolling R&B Thread 2007

well, Paula is kind of hamfisted and fumbling herself, don't you think? that guy The DEY on "Walk Away" is hilarious, "Sometimes I hug her, wish that it was you that I'm huggin'/ And I realize how much I'm buggin."

well you can stay on your side of the line then r t c but I guarantee it's a lot more fun over here

ha yeah but paula's in love and teenpop 2k7 only wishes it was

also, they will never realize how much they're buggin'.

just going back to the state of male rnb - i guess the one loophole i kinda missed in terms of drab loverboys & the 90s (and also tying into deep neyo-ian genre fetish as well) is... pretty ricky? they are also the silliest group of all time however. (westwood radio freestyle: "i eat that thang with the legs on / something something then i blow it in your bum" :O )

not to mention their effect on the youth.

(hysterics)

Fuck Pretty Ricky. They are getting a DtI thread.

"Suga Suga" sounds way more Texan than any of that Screwston bullsh. Bash sounds like he's about to saddle up a horse and ride off into the sunset on that shit.

be like me and listen to good-sized clipettes of kelly r's album here

so i'm a lil wary of being a serial repper of the (uh oh) generic now, but this... i dunno, i think it's got something. a sort of quiet, deliberate confidence to it. something you could grow to love. there's a good couple moments in those clips ('flashback' particularly, cos it's been like a year since that leaked and i'm still no nearer to finding a resolution on it) where i thought, well now if this was teedra singing, man i'd be feeling this, but then that's just it with kelly innit; the kinda civil sensitivity that keeps its alarm-ringing and dish-breaking indoors. and considering some were already seeming to struggle with 'like this' not smashing them over the head, you wonder if people are gonna be willing to invest enough to get into this. interesting.

after yesterday i guess you could say this is might be the grown n sexy version of cassie's album.

maybe that's going too far.

I haven't heard anything from Kelly R. that convinces me she should be a solo artist, but I haven't tried that hard, either.

Any hangups I had going into the Amerie album were completely misguided. It is yoga fucking flambe.

I'm liking that new Eve single, "Tambourine"

Yeah, I only heard it a couple times but remember it being awesome.

Kelly Clarkson will sell a fucking shitload of copies, but Amerie's record is the one I'm even looking more forward to.

i was on the fence about 'tambourine', but the stefani-esque video tipped me firmly into the LOVE IT side.

yeah, stefani-esque is almost too kind! esp when she goes straight from the 'what you waiting for' garden into 'sweet escape' goldworld.

after the intro sean paul 'get busy'-isms it runs out of steam way fast imo.

b-b-but it's like a slightly caffeinated 'like this'! (which has totally grown on me in the past week)

:[

i'll get back to you on that.

nahhhh sod it. not having it! they have like, vague go-go elements in common i suppose (although i tend to hear more of a elegant bollywood swank in 'like this' - innnnteresting how similar they can sound eh, zzzzzz), and eve duh, but that's all i hear.

my opinion of "Tambourine" has improved slightly since I first heard it (the goofy video helped), but it still feels to me like a very lightweight version of what Swizz did on Remy Ma's "Whuteva."

have u heard ny's mixtape lex? she seems to be the only rng chick to date with any kind of media push, but what i've heard don't seem too special. and yet again the rng defeat of people's most regular rnb sounding stuff being the hits applies re: 'willow', which i was surprised to hear on daytime kiss fm.

it's also produced by ukg geezer duncan powell, so double slap in the face there i guess!

i think the go-go elements are well to the fore on both ‘tambourine’ and ‘like this’! not just y’know the samples and so on, but the way the beats trip over themselves in this delightfully relaxed way, and both kelly and eve are really carefree…the way they handle the tempo changes as well. i do hear a bit of ‘whuteva’ in ‘tambourine’ but it actually took me a couple of listens to even notice those crunk slabs…’whuteva’ itself always seemed to be a rather leaden-footed take on ebony eyez’ ‘in ya face’.

have had ny recommended to me loads, i checked out her myspazz last night and was a bit underwhelmed, it’s a bit…nu-soul? reminded me slightly of that amazing amel larrieux track from last year but not as good, but it might grow on me. tanya is still the r&g girl du jour for me. though has sadie ama done anything since her single stiffed?

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That Chris Brown "Cinderella" remix of/with Rihanna "Umbrella" is all over dc and Baltimore radio. It's just ok.

I don't hear a bit of Go-Go in "Tambourine." It's much too fast, for starters.

Man just when I started to get used to "Umbrella" to the point that I could leave the station on when it came on the radio, they put fucking demon child CHRIS BROWN on it. For a couple days I kept catching that remix at the very end and I was like who the fuck is hooting ad libs over the outro?

havent seen much of sadie. was 'let me take you away' ever a proper single? it certainly feels as established an rng tune as there's been in the last few years.

'willow' is vaguely folksy, yeah. crispy leaves and all that. which amel larrieux track do you mean though? i quite liked 'magic', but it was no stunna or anything - she'll always be a 1 hit wonder to me. she had a dull album of jazz standards this year as well.

that tanya's ok, in a uk charity case kinda way. the rng way! do you like lauren mason? i hear she's blonde.

haha yeah i think the go-goness of 'tambourine' is entirely in some completely wrongheaqded subconscious old soul man vibe you get from the sample. also tambourines, they use tambourines in go-go right? WE DON'T EVEN KNOW

yeah the chorus sample is kind of a Chuck Brown-ish old man voice (where's that sample from, anyway?). I guess tambourines would have to be one of the 80 different percussion instruments every Go-Go band has, but at the moment I'm trying to think of a prominent use of tambourine in a Go-Go song and I'm not really hearing it. D.C radio definitely LOVES the overt Go-Go vibe in "Like This," though.

"Blow Your Whistle" by Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers

says the internet. u were correct.

haha yeah i think the go-goness of 'tambourine' is entirely in some completely wrongheaqded subconscious old soul man vibe you get from the sample.

aguilera to thread, obv - though for all the actual musical parallels 'tambourine' still has a v different feel to something like 'candyman'.

re larrieux - 'gills and tails'! so so sultry - "i feel my skin...growing...scales..." i bought the album off the back of that but nothing else grabbed me, though it was all pleasant enough.

hmm! i'll put that on l8r. 'get up' is the one i remember her for.

since amel larrieux & rng are likely to never darken a convo together ever again, i will relate this shitty story for no one's benefit. so one time we heard cameo play this rng number by IMP BATCH (who were awesome at the time with gype riddim u may recall) (where are they now!) and the beat was totally great and for once, for once it had a proper song to it. impressed! later though it came to light thru nerdery that these milton keynes teens had somehow got ahold of some random larrieux accapella, stuck it on top and tried to get away with it. i guess they must have just typed pella into limewire, but it was fun to imagine them being massive nu-soul herbs. and it was still a good beat.

THAT'S the story. now i can live my life.

btw have you guys heard the new Chuck Brown album? made a dent on the the Billboard R&B chart and Go-Go-dude-turned-Mary J./Faith Evans producer Chucky Thompson did tracks on it, so I'd say it's fair game to discuss here. the single I heard was kind of a goofy thing with programmed drums and a little kid rapping on it, though, so it seems more like a weird misbegotten crossover attempt than the regular old Go-Go I'd rather hear.

that was a good story rtc! it amused me anyway.

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DC stations are playing Chuck Brown's "Chuck baby Don't Give A..." alot. It features Chuck's daughter rapping on it. An unusual beat, but not strickly go-go. It's grown on me. That and Critical Condition Band's "Classy," which features a female vocalist and perfects the current go-go/r'n'b with semi-soulful female vocal approach.

ok so this is meleka's 'you make me feel', off last year's altogether quite good "the voice of grime" rng mixtape. i mention it cos

- i am bang into terror danjah again
- its gorgeously windswept (and strangely inconsequential!)pixelplainz are relevant to this thread, apparently
- i miss the times when grime producers tried a bit harder to establish an timbalandy auteurship over rng starlets rather than just giving away some old beats that arent that fun to rap over like it is now.

did anyone like that rashad song i threw up btw?

critical condition band is like, what, the roots doing crunk? odd. 'chuck baby' is kinda fun but i'll pass.

also bink is in chuck brown's band too it says. now everyone can finally stop asking where he is.

weird! Bink's drums have always had a certain looseness to them, though, so it kinda makes sense.

I'm lost. What do you guys mean by "rng"?

I think they're talking about grime? or garage? I dunno, I decided a while ago that if we're gonna go off-topic we might as well focus on Go-Go.

probably not this, though:

http://www.westcoast2k.net/images/snoop_r&g_album_cover.jpg

I, for some reason, have never gotten around to hearing that, despite loving all the singles. Probably because I have little to no faith in Snoop to make good albums, but that hasn't stopped me from acquiring and enjoying parts of the album before and album after, so I really have no excuse.

probably not, no. can i say tho that that 'crazy' w/ nate dogg is AHHH SO GOOD. in fact "blue carpet treatment" as a whole is way slept on.

rng is "rhythm and grime", aka grime with rnb struggling to make sense on top. ideally we want it to be a baby latin freestyle and not mostly awkward rubbish like it really is. feel free to hate, it might be cool.

oop, 'probly not' not directed at you rev

Critical Condition Band's "Classy" is polished go-go and rhythm, more like Rihanna fronting a go-go band then "Roots doing crunk." Some go-go is now billed as "go-go for grown folks". "Classy" appeals to that over 30 demographic as well as to the under 30 crowd thanks to the poppy hook.

ummm 'roll call'? other tunes with big synth stabs?

maybe that's what go-go sounds like these days, i dunno

I, for some reason, have never gotten around to hearing that, despite loving all the singles

ditto - or hang on, was 'step yo game up' even a single? i think i might even prefer that to 'drop it like it's hot'.

r&g has had its moments! about...five, ever, but still!

RTC speaking of Terra Danjah (wrong thread but whatevs) I saw a mix-tape cd for Aftershock recently (!!! This never happens in Australia but there you go) called Lords of something something. Worth getting do you know?

Hey has Andy K taken over allmusic's editorial policy entirely? There was some big feature on the front page about how "Umbrella" is the jam of the year and Janelle Monae might be the new "Hey Ya"/"Crazy" style crossover-to-indie-types thing this year.

that should be house of lordz vol 1 by the lordz. havent heard it personally, but i think the lordz are like a catch-all group of all the rappers on the label - bruza, and then randoms like triple threat, tinie tempah, royal. (aftershock haven't really mastered rappers, it has to be said.) beatswise, who knows. but i am.... 79% sure that cd will be a dud.

Tim F: NO!

Hmm rtc maybe I'll get the Boy Better Know vols 3/4 double pack instead. Even if it's dud there's the frission derived from one of the discs being a "tropical disc".

Andy is that "NO!" as in:
- "No, but isn't it interesting how pop-friendly allmusic's features have become!"
- "No, and I am bitter twisted about things at amg at the moment!"
- "No, and it upsets me that you would assume I was responsible for that. In fact I despite "Umbrella" and Janelle Monae both!"
- "No, shut up, stop talking about this stuff! (taps nose)"

haha. omg. that was the choice?

'tropical' is s-t-u-n-n-i-n-g. in fact, it's not even about it being the most wonderful thing i heard all last year - i might even go so far as to call it the lost masterpiece of british music. what masks itself as... actually no wait, you go get it first. then we'll talk.