Rolling R&B Thread 2007

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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.

Well I was gonna get that one first anyway. But now I'm excited.

I expect you to bring these things to my attention without my prompting BTW!

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

-- r|t|c, Friday, June 15, 2007 6:10 PM (2 days ago)

Some go-go sounds like that, but other times they bring a female vocalist forward and it sounds different:

http://profile.imeem.com/tweEW8/music/2aenOJ2Z/ccbclassy_girl_full_version/

tim i think i have that aftershock mixtape! but i can't find it, gah. it's not amazing - there are some v pretty r&g things courtesy of gemma fox, the ama sisters and so on, and some REALLY bad mcing.

re: lauren mason - i wish she was good. even listenable would do.

also everyone please post on kelly rowland thread, i love that album so much.

also hey, rtc, i'm halfway through the ny mixtape and it's pretty good! there have been stretches where it's washed over me, but quite regular omg moments too. she's got a great voice - it's nice to hear an r&g girl who sings with vigour, not just floaty dreamy prettiness (not that ny's that vigorous, but still)

RTC! The Tropical mix is like woah. Sunship meets prime Jammer!

oh so THIS is what robin thicke sounds like.

there was a thread on new answers yesterday about what music patrick bateman would listen to nowadays, that sprung unbidden to mind when listening to the thicke album.

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)"

I suppose I'm partially to blame. I THINK we were running pop-friendly features at least semi-regularly from the start.

I just realized that Natasha has a lisp. AWESOME!

q - whatever happened to the spizzazz site? i used to love that.

i dont like that thicke album too much. apart from that big single everyone knows now.

Chrisette Michele - Worth investigating?

I need to hear more R&B. I think the only R&B albums I've actually gotten around to hearing this year are Ne-Yo (meh) and Amerie (fiYAH). I guess Omarion, too, but I think that came out at the end of last year, but it's only a few songs deep, anyway.

Probably old news for all of y'all, but I am totally loving the Diddy/Keyshia Cole track. Diddy is curiously, er, absent on the track, given his top billing. The Keyshia parts are almost like some weird Richard X style OMD/Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls bootleg.

despite that valiant stab at RUINING IT, i concur that 'last night' is ageless greatness. i've even managed to transmute diddy ballsing it up with his nonsense at the end into a kind of, i dunno, smug endorsement of the track's fidelity to genre rather than its song. anyone gonna buy that idea? it's going cheap.

i love diddy for releasing the mario winans one as the next single too! that album is GOLD.

Yeah it's an awful idea isn't it, sorry for sharing! Keyshia is amazing on it though, she totally loses it.

I agree WTF is Diddy saying at the end.

Diddy that shit isn't even funny for R Kels all the time.

speaking of ballsed endings, the sean kingston people are such pussies for leaving out the "SUICIDAL, SUICIDAL, SUICIIIii-rrrwwww" turning off the record metaphor thing at the end of the 'beautiful girls' vid. still so cute tho, i love it. (has the reverend recanted his sins yet? it's so gonna happen, deal with it.)

i'm kinda warming to keyshia cole lately, and i don't know why. don't think it's that new song! maybe it's going out with jeezy and hanging out with missy that's made me kinda, believe her? the AHH REAL SOUL critical reaction to her when she came out seemed so pat and unquestioning. also, the apparently sharing remy ma's stylist thing.

so yawn is it time to talk about NICOLE SCHERZINGER + TI + POLOW yet or shall i come back next month?

it's kinda like 'blindfold me' x 'it's me bitches' x being any good

what's it called?

it's called BLAOW