Rolling R&B Thread 2007

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

ha ha nice. I will report back.

If Kells did Diddy's part on "Last Night" (and rewrote the coda, obvs) it would be a contender for song of the year.

don't agree with that. even if someone put a gun to kells head and made him play it straight, it would still be too ott emotive to act as a foil to keyshia the way diddy does. be another camp minidrama.

diddy's never really what's wrong with a track, i find; it's the suspicion of diddy that bugs people. (i guess in the same way you could argue that my own suspicion of kells is infecting how i think the song would come out, but i think my grounds are greater right now.)

like dude said, the paris hilton of rap.

I think I heard the full version of "Last Night" once or twice when the album first dropped and since then only the radio edit, so I couldn't even remember what he says on the outro and had to look it up, jeez that really does kinda change the tenor of the song.

I agree that Diddy's usually more objectionable on principle than in practice, but c'mon, his ridiculous mealymouthed singing on "Last Night" totally bog it down. Not to say the song would be better with R., but maybe a capably anonymous R&B dude would've helped. (xpost)

the music/beats on the diddy album are AMAZING. and the tracks with big boi, ciara and timbaland are excellent. theyre just spoilt by diddy being on them.

i dunno, nonwithstanding that stupid outro i really like the contrast you get with diddy and keyshia, that whole awkward distance between them. i don't have any trouble finding him sincere generally*, but even if he did sound mealymouthed i still think that's more interesting than a proper competent matched duet that runs the risk of the whole song sounding mealymouthed.

* mumble mumble d-dot, mumble mumble litany of ghostwriters; even if he never touched keyboard nor rhymebook in his life, you think a totally distinctive album like press play, diddy's whole career even, comes about by just chucking money around? the guy has a rare curatorial flair that makes him as much of an artist as most people, i'd argue

Oh i totally agree that with or without ghostwriters/producers, Diddy guides the aesthetic of his/Bad Boy's records, especially Press Play. He went full bore for a sound that noone really expected or wanted, least of all from him, and it ended up fitting pretty nicely with what Ciara and Justin put out around the same time (Last Night/Promise/Until The End Of Time is my triumvirate of nu-LinnDrum ecstacy that I inevitably hear some or all of on the drive home every single day).

That line "all cried out, with nothing to say" is like the perfect summation of Keyshia Cole's entire career.

that nicole scherzinger is a motherfucker of a track

in a good way

"diddy's never really what's wrong with a track, i find; it's the suspicion of diddy that bugs people."

This is totally OTM to a factor of 10. Yeah Diddy is like the Paris Hilton of rap but even more so maybe, people will go to extraordinary lengths to dismiss/deny the good stuff he does, even when often his rapping is really tight and interesting (although that doesn't really apply here). The difference maybe is that I think people's hatred of Diddy actually does originally arise from (parts of) his late 90s music - but that was a v. different time in terms of people's attitudes toward pop-rap and Diddy's style.

ha ha remember when ethan and j0hn d fell out over ethan liking diddy?

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.)

Ah, I'm afraid not. There are other hit songs out there that I dislike like, but this is the first in some time that I simply CAN NOT LISTEN TO. When it comes on while I'm working I run to the radio to switch it as soon as I hear it, whereas with any other song I don't like I just deal with it, cause I know it will be over in a few minutes. I've actually started avoiding stations that play it. I can't imagine myself ever coming around.

Ironically, the opening of "Beautiful Girls" (at least when played out of a shitty old radio with lots of industrial clatter going on all around) sounds exactly like the intro of "Last Nite", thus lulling me into a false sense of security before that fucking voice kills my soul.

...that I dislike like...

Jeez. As much as I ragged on "Bossy" last year, to the where Jaxon had to tell me shut up already about it (I took his advice, this is the first time I've mentioned "Bossy" on ILM since), I'd take it over "Beautiful Girls" by a wide margin.

...to the point where...

I need to stop fucking up my posts/

Chrisette Michele - Worth investigating?

-- The Reverend, Friday, 6 July 2007 05:26 (Yesterday) Link

The album is quite good. A few tracks are kind of corny in that "neo-soul" way, but for the most part it's great. She's is really talented... it's a shame that the project has been so mishandled by DefJam, I think "Good Girl" could've been a big hit.

RE: Scherzinger's new single... um... YAWN. It's "Blindfold Me" minus all of grime, kinkiness and attitude. I bet it'll be a huge hit :| Man, Kelis just can't catch a break... lol.

"Whatever You Like" is better/sexier than "Blindfold Me" because it doesn't sound like it's being sung by Marge Simpson. Unless you're into that kind of thing.

umm on further listens i could make a pretty good devils advocate case against that scherzinger, mainly for its enervating sucky sucky love u long time vibe (also "she hot as a stove! her name is nicole!" haha) (she hot as some coals? she hot as... some fresh rolls? nah i dunno what'd work better either) but quite frankly unfavourably comparing it to kelis only makes me like it more! i don't feel like a big kelis debate but 'blindfold me's "kinkiness and attitude" is beyond risible, and what i called her 'operatic mooing' on the old thread is at its very worst there. the woman's had a zillion breaks already, it's not our fault she's mad unappealing.

xpost!!

(er is nicole saying "something bout that cock" as well? cf xtina 'candyman' WTF WHEN DID THIS BECOME ACCEPTABLE?!)

i'd really like it if someone had a go at arguing why polow isn't the greatest producer around. but not just listing his worst beats and stuff. at his very best his tracks have this singular concept to them where everything that goes on in them makes perfect sense; at his worst (like the rich boy album, perhaps this nicole too) he's vulnerable to cooking up big chunky soups of interesting but kinda awkward stuff, when u imagine he didnt have a big plan so he thought he'd just chuck everything in. sorta like the way dj shadow sounds so ungainly when he produces for rappers, or at a pinch if lenky felt the need to cram all his bespoke variations on a riddim into one song. obv polow is still totally awesome, but DISCUSS