Rolling R&B Thread 2007

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

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

haha ATOMIC PWN. keyshia fans better come and make their cases sharpish, or they lost.

while it's true about diddy presaging certain radio things, i think i love press play more for the ridiculous caprices that won't EVER be fashionable. brazen pharoah monche dress-ups, chintzy boogie, the james brown shit, the amazing chamber orchestra interlude w/ avant, the fucking DRUM N BASS HYPERBALLAD w/ brandy! find me another rich guy in music who dared like diddy! kanye could get a fucking professorship by the time he makes an album as ballsy.

"Thought You Said" = excellence incarnate.

I realize nobody but Al is going to back me up on this, but the Rich Boy album is, for the most part, pretty damn good.

well, xuxhk likes the Rich Boy album and cries about how rap thread meanies should like it more at every opportunity. i don't dislike it, but haven't spent much time with it since the first month or so that it was out, so I'm probably due to listen to and re-evaluate it.

keysh / missy vid

so yeah, i'm guessing i briefly just got bored of everyone else's persona and felt like someone all cried out? holla at an empty signifier. this tune still escapes me, but it's not like you'd bother getting uppity about some old slappers singing along to 'juicy' on the bus either, so.

it is not as good as teedra 'be your girl', for instance. anyone heard teedra's new mixtape? live bits and rap beatjacks as per - naturally, it was very enjoyable. like tim said, her voice cuts you through whatever the weather. critically what sticks out again is her taste in rap beats; she continues her crusade to rehabilitate wifebeaten g-unit beats ('amusement park' this time - consider myself cosigned)(and 'many men'!) and otherwise just popular fun stuffs like 'get it shawty', 'money in the bank', 'throw some ds'... keeps her all young and unpreachy for a soul gal.

i wonder who'd make a good first lady of g-unit. olivia was a little hard done by, to be fair. she looked like a boss bitch, but it wasnt enough to keep the boys under control. teedra's maternal enough but would disapprove at their antics. keyshia was rumoured, bit too baby mama perhaps. the possibility of ciara is a bad dream. maggie thatcher, i hear she's free.

there's nothing really wrong with that rich boy alb i guess, but none of it sticks at all. you let it pass by you for an hour until pastor troy shows up, goes AND I LUV YA BABY! MWAAAAH / HUGZ N KISSES / FUCK THEM NIGGAZ / AND FUCK THEM BITCHES and blows the whole rest of it out of the water.

pretty much gone right off that scherzinger now.

gorgeous summer ballad alert!

and then there's gorgeous summery R&B-friendly zouk: check out "Played Out Record" on Chelsy Shantel's myspace.

Wow, zouk from Portugal. That is nice

Teedra's "Love's Gonna Be" is a little bit disappointing :-(

Not bad actually, and theoretically there's nothing wrong with her making a bid for the charts, but this doesn't utilise her voice enough. And it isn't really catchy enough to justify the move anyway, despite sampling "Ain't No Mountain High Enough".

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

cf keri hilson's brilliant 'hands & feet' too, which you prob hate. "where'd you get that from, your daddy?"

trying to figure out whether i love, or merely like and am interested in, j holiday's 'bed'...if 'umbrella' wanted to be 'promise', but didn't quite get there? bits of it sound uncomfortably forced, but then comes a wonderful rolling melody ("gonna rock your body, turn you over") and all is nearly forgiven.

nicole scherzinger rulez. love it.

also "operatic mooing" is kind of perfect to describe kelis on 'blindfold me' but how is this a bad thing?

(I'm popping onto this thread to mention ten days after the discussion that I am shocked and amazed that everything off the Diddy album that's gotten radio play has been great. That's all, fucking off now...)

The album itself is great.

I'm glad Dan used the "everything that's gotten radio play" qualifier instead of just saying "all the singles" or I might've gotten the impression he liked that shitty song with Aguilera.

They played that one to death in the Boston area. I think it's really excellent (but in general Christina has to really try to make me dislike a song she's singing, her first album aside).

I dunno, I think it's the first song where she actually sounds like Britney and has that weird Daffy Duck quality to her voice. I'm glad R&B radio didn't mess with it like they did "Come To Me" and "Last Night" (I guess it did well on pop stations?).

She only really does that on the chorus, though; the pre-chorus hooks are basically Christina singing comfortably in her middle voice without belting. Plus that beat is monstrous.

Eh, vaguely dancey nu-Just Blaze beats just aren't doing it for me, especially compared to the weird hyped up hip house vibe he was flirting with back in 03/04.

xpost: J Holiday's "Bed" is absolutely fantastic. Not quite on the level of "Promise" or "Umbrella" (though, I agree, it sort of sounds like a mixture of the two), but it's so sensual and sumptuous and rich. Amazing.

Some other songs I'm feeling:

Chilli (Of TLC) - Gliding : http://youtube.com/watch?v=xuljAR0g1gU

Candy Hill - Juicy : http://youtube.com/watch?v=yu-9N49qKlw

"Juicy" is totally a throwback to late 90s/ early 00s.. like we were talking about in that Toya thread. It sort of sounds like 3LW.

"Tell Me" is the best single from Press Play so far. It's all about Diddy's unwarrantedly aggro rapping. Really though, there's like five more singles from that album. I have to put in a mention for "Special Feeling", because no one talks about it and it's just about the best thing ever. Diddy should cover "Irresistable Bitch".