Rolling R&B Thread 2007

I didn't write anything like that Alex. Is that in the abstract?

You know I would have said Teedra!

Yeah, that phrase is in the front page blurb, which they usually take/paraphrase from the body of the review, so I just assumed it was in there somewhere, but you're right, it isn't. My bad. Boo on whoever said it, anyway!

The more clipped disco-funk of "Take Control" might be closer to "anonymous" r&b (one could just as easily imagine it coming from Nicole Scherzinger

You do know that the original version of "Take Control" was by Tori Alamaze, right? I prefer Amerie's version, though.

Am I the only one who likes "Touch"? I keep seeing it get slagged off everywhere.

yeah, 'is it you' is great. i 4ever love the way cassie can go from supposed siren android auteur vehicle to this sweetly blank (um, blankly sweet?) teen relationship muse.

(or indeed "gloriously inconsequential" like tim said of amerie's cassiest move, that'll do too)

"he said he had fallen so in love with me / and i said ditto, ditto, ditto." is <i>still</i> the line though, the cassie urtext! oh and that delightfully whatever badgirl rock one, haha

also - ryan leslie's ridiculously sweet tooth is yet further proof of him being the patrick bateman of this rnb shit that i always knew he was. i could talk forever about him i think!

btw janelle monae (who would like to be cassie but never can be, come to think of it, kinda like a tinman who can't get rid of his heart), her thing is out now apparently. i'd say the ep format was a crafty idea but hopelessly fatal to her schtick at the end of the day.

http://www.digstation.com/AlbumDetails.aspx?albumID=ALB000009731

see, there's no real reason why wizard of oz refs should be particularly teenpop 2k7ish

so haha why am i feeling the deepest of regrets now

DJ ENVY & RED CAFE is maybe the least promising set of words ones read all day but turns out i got undemanding fondness for this thing

(dj spinna i am too herby to let you go!)

Yeah "Ditto" is fabulous. The Cassie album really grew on me and I liked it a lot to begin with, it sounds like an unacknowledged classic now.

Maybe the difference between "Ditto" and "Is It You" is that I found i had to let my guard down a bit in order to appreciate the former, whereas the latter combines that totally unreflective sweetness (which is actually kind of rare in teenpop, which paradoxically tends to sound more knowing and grown-up when talking about the same thing) with this sort of all-embracing universalist feel, kind of international-language-of-pop.

Though I should note that such tunes are rarely hits, perhaps the public are somehow suspicious of this vibe? "Me & U" and "Long Way 2 Go" are such songs of their era, whereas "Is It You" kind of transcends era, which could hurt it perhaps.

Yet another J.Lo single that uses a classic hip hop break, this time it's Eddie Kendricks "Keep On Truckin'", and like all of the other ones it's AWESOME.

she'd make a great bolltwood singer.

*bollywood

The Lloyd album is so good

Though if you didn't like the singles, don't bother. It's very of a piece.

What if I love one of the singles and think the other one is the blandest thing on earth?

Check out the album and you'll come around on whichever you think is bland.

Fair enough.

keyshia cole drops today, anyone heard it?

I just listened to it briefly. The production was amazing, but none of the tunes really grabbed me. The Jill Scott album is kind of similar but sounds more promising.

yeah I love "Let It Go" but am kind of hot and cold on Keyshia herself, and the 2nd single sounds way too much like other Darkchild productions for Shareefa and Mary J. I might feel generous and pick it up during my trip to the store this week anyway, though.

heh so this so uncool of keke palmer's is really lobbing the teenpop cat amongst the pigeons - proper disney assault on rnb (maybe the first??) featuring yr likes of clutch, darkchild, dream, and rotem. also: it is fkn excellent yo. unnerving steely musical theatre training behind every fluffy "ta da!!" makes it supertight, all these anonymous jazz hards constantly poking you in the ribs. 'rainbow' is a set piece to die 4; the new single 'keep it moving' is a total late summer stunner, the lil sister to j.holiday, CHECK IT NOW but maybe don't watch the video at the same time cos it is way better than all that cutesy nausea might suggest.

special word for 'game song', aka the clutch-penned video game thing andy k mentioned on the other thread; KILLER CHORUS OF DOOM ("THAT'S WHY I, I HATE MADDEN, THAT'S WHY I, I HATE MADDEN") but only if you get past wincing at clutch's smartarse provocative first lines:

i turned 13, i can keep company
he comes over and sits with me
we watch movies, go online
under strict parental guidance

now correct me if i'm wrong but surely rule 0001 of teenpop is never bring the bloody age into it!! these guys are smirking all the way to the bank, i'm telling you, and one dreads to think what else theyre gonna come up with for tiffany evans. but god help me i kinda like em for it still.

<img src="http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/41VQ0GnPDXL._AA240_.jpg";>

btw sorry but has there ever been an uglier cover ever

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/41VQ0GnPDXL._AA240_.jpg

cmon bitch

kinda love 'let it go' now too, but then who would ever hate it? so um, i dunno

havent caught the new single yet but i quite liked 'didn't i tell you' ft too short; the runners seriously get more hammer horror everytime i hear them. i think the song is secretly about vampires tbh.

"so now the sun coming up, you wanna chaaange"

Things I was wrong about: "Because of You"; the Robin Thicke album. Both of those are pretty damn great.

that keke palmer vid is AWESOME, thx rtc!

np. everyone else here shd check the brick & lace/kat deluna stuff we got into on the not talking about dancehall 2007 thread btw

there are no incorrect observations whatsoever in andy k's keyshia rvw, yet i cannot back his kindly spun conclusion. the girl is a void in a bad wig.

rtc can you give a rundown of yr take on mary j's career? which albums you dig now, which you were into and have burned out on, or were blah then rediscovered or ... something. what did you think of breakthru? what about that joint w/ method man and diddy? my life vs. whats the 411?

i kind of want to understand if u think keyshia is redundant, or just overly worshipful, or why she doesn't fit in to the whole mary j mythos ... lots of great artists are initially perceived as pale imitations (i.e. the barry white bites isaac hayes! kind of nonsense that no one in their right mind would say today)

(esp cuz they were all biting lou rawls)

yeah, on one listen, the album is just really blank and barely there even by R&B standards. she sings every song the exact same way, the same climactic big note on every song, even the one that could've had a tender/sexy delivery she gives the big blown out heartbreak treatment. if she'd followed the lead of "Last Night"/"Let It Go" for some funky 80's jam aesthetic it could've been cool, but like the review said it's all warmed over 00's Mary J. (which Shareefa's album did better). a shame, because at the Keyshia show I caught over the summer she tore the house down.

and the Anthony Hamilton duet's good but would've been better if he was a co-star and not a 30-second cameo.

so deej did you actually agree or disagree or anything with me on keyshia there or does yr request for 50,000 word mjb guess papers still stand

cos (and this may sound like a cop-out) a big part of me kinda feels the whole thing is secretly predicated on way more superficial lines than str8 compare/contrasting grand narrative arcs - mjb didn't obviously invent anything either, and she's probably played around with the generics in her career as much as keyshia has, but the point is that just her delivery on its own is so uniquely tuned into that kind of necessary burnished realness, and keyshia's kind of isn't really. they could sing the same song at the same time and still mjb would sound like she's had an extra day to reflect on it, for emotions to have sunk in deeper.

on the other hand tho deej you have kinda won (if that wz ur intention) cos i now have to come out and say, yes obv keyshia is not a VOID, because her voice also conveys a different individual persona to an extent; she's way more of a hysterical hothead, she's there right in the moment, watch out dude she's taking a swing at you right now, all of that stuff. it's kinda all over the place. so i'm not sure if the question is whether she doesn't do enough justice to that persona to make it enduring, or whether she does and it's just not as immediately grabby to clamber over some jaded arms-folded first impression. you'd think it should do tho, if she were really that immediate and instinctive. (i've come to like a few of her songs after recently having made myself listen to both albums, but i don't really wanna lose the virtue of my kneejerk reaction either basically. also i often feel like i could grow to love any old tripe if i listen to it long enough, dunno if that's just me.)

even more superficially - the beats! i challenge people to name me great songs sung on terrible beats.

now let's all fucking talk about that alicia keys single. i am real addicted to it! but i'm still not quite sure why!

one is SO SUPER SOLD on it by the time it gets to the wo-oh-oh-oh-ohs but it kinda seems i gotta make the same uphill trudge to get there every time

richjuz is right about that bumptious stevie synth, dunno about the 4/4 house revival though. post-'promise' emocardiograms maybe?

I hated "No One" at first - her voice sounds terribly strained, the lyrics are trite, sub-"Don't Matter", it just sounds so cheap... but that amazing VMA performance changed my mind about it. The bridge is amazing! I see myself getting tired of it quickly, since it gets played like 30 times a day here, but for now it's cool... nowhere near "You Don't Know My Name" or " If I Aint Got You" or "How Come You Don't Call Me? ", but it's good.

"No One" is real wack to me. I want to respect its chunky beat and cheesy synths, but the way she sings it is just so heaving and overdone and the tune goes nowhere. Even Alicia Keys should be able to say more in a chorus than "noone can get in the way of what I'm feeling" over and over and over. She shoulda released the "Freedom '90" cover instead. I miss the sumptuous subtlety of "You Don't Know My Name" and "If I Ain't Got You."

(xpost - maybe I'm just Brainwasher 2 weeks ago here, but I'm kinda hoping I can hold out and keep hating this song)

your criticisms i cannot disprove

but chunky n cheesy is an enticing combo nevertheless

alicia keys feat junior reid - no one (salaam remi rmx)

HO YES

that new cheri dennis / joc / zoe is a jam also

thoughts on 2nd singles:

- the snippet that's out there of Alicia's, "Like You'll Never See Me Again," is really really fucking good, can't wait to hear the whole thing

- warming to Keyshia's after watching the video over and over

- Trey Songz' is damn near unlistenable, dude is officially out of control with the overemoting vibrato

is that trey single 'can't help but wait'? man i feel like such a lame-ass for falling for another cookiecutter stargate job but fuck it, it's a good wallow

haha keysh suddenly looked super cute on the beach for me too but i'm not having it cloud my mind

Yeah, "Can't Help But Wait." I think after that last round of Ne-Yo/Rihanna/Yamin singles Stargate is officially dead to me, but it's mostly that Trey totally overdoes it. It did kind of make me retroactively like "Wonder Woman" by comparison, though.

not sure what i wanna say about this new the dream stuff

it is curious

ughhh that dude. "Just Fine" is the only reason he isn't dead to me too.

reliable!

your keys has arrived btw, not in the mood right now but i'll check it later

anyone heard the angie stone

I really like 'Can't Help But Wait' - the elastic beat and pleasing Rhodes chords changes are what caught my ear.