Rolling R&B Thread 2007

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.

Beyoncé is planning to switch musical direction on her third solo album.

The singer is reportedly prepared to ditch her usual heavy R'n'B for a more dancefloor-orientated LP.

The former Destiny's Child star has hired Brighton dance act Freemasons to work on some tracks for the record.

Freemasons' James Wiltshire told the Daily Star: "The album is going to be huge.

"It will rival anything the likes of Britney and Rihanna have done recently. Beyoncé and her team can see where mistakes were made on the last album.

"It was very American, very R'n'B and stripped back. They want to go for a more international sound this time."

can't really complain after just listening to an album as desperately flat and laboured with careworn urban zzzzz as the new mya. liberation my arse.

i hope by "international" they mean rip-off euro-cheese shit like off the new rihanna album and not some more shakira collabo bullshit.

well mr sparks, by putting 'freemasons beyonce' into youtube and taking yr pick you will discover that that is indeed what was presumably meant, yes.

or by reading the preceeding sentence :X i shouldn't read from the bottom up anymore.

this predictable-ass chris brown album can go in the bin as well. played right into al's hands alas.

mario's album sorta achieves this quite neat trick of being weirdly compelling for being even more of an anonymous soup of modern ballad production. bewilderingly elusive almost, if i were being kind.

tim finney may or may not be interested to hear that i realised that that 'keep it movin' of keke palmer's i was liking above is very much reminiscent of toya's 'no matta what (party all night)'! in fact the toya sounds very modern indeed right now with all the thedream-inspired candy cockrock guitar flirting that's about.

I will check it. I think mitch/jermaine was always a huge fan of "No Matta What" as well. I was also very partial to the underrated "I Do Pt. 2", which was er futurist in a 2004 sense more than a 2007 sense.

Pleased to hear about the next Beyonce album, sad to hear about the new Mya album (though none of the attempts-at-singles I've heard from her in the past two years have been particularly inspiring. Shame - Moodring was so good!

New Badu:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/4746046da2b183/

none of the attempts-at-singles I've heard from her in the past two years have been particularly inspiring.

Have you heard "Ridin"? That song is awesome, no idea why it hasn't caught on...

Tweet's new single is really great:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Cya6IfOxl2A

aieee clownstep!!!!

What's really good, of late? I know it's boring to love Polow so much, but, well, has he done anything recently?

Nothing really comes to mind from Polow..

Recent stuff that has been constant rotation from me lately:

- Keyshia's Album
- Jill Scott, Chrisette Michele, Ledisi,etc.
- J Valentine "She Worth The Trouble"
- Dear Jayne "Rain"
- Carl Thomas "2 Pieces"
- All of the leaked stuff from Dream's album, particularly "Falestto" which is like top 10 of the year for me.
- Tank
- J. Holiday's record, particularly the new single "Suffocate"
- The new Tweet stuff...

oh and Chaka's album.

sargent said he's into the dream stuff as well. you two should break that down. (pretty much the whole first half of the album's leaked right?)

i'm still on the fence about him - i'm sure he's quite talented, and he's certainly had his moments, but something like 'i love your girl' kinda hints at tugging at the heartstrings and then gets itself ruined by cocky carelessness and waaaay too much of that 'rnb will eat itself' selfawareness. (the supposed album title - 'love me all summer, hate me all winter' - kinda made me smile, but that vein of wry insecure amateurism is so hard to care about when you've already got t-pain. nut the fuck up dudes!) but then perhaps on a lazier navel-gazier day he may end up making sense to me.

like singing "the american dream, and you know what i mean" over glum twinkly intro is probly too cleverclever for its own good, if i do actually know what he means. but when it comes to bulding on the helplessness of "man look at shawty go-ooooooo", and shawty being someone else's girl, he's got nothing to show.

talking of cleverclever, i'm still trying to work out the ways of the clutch - check this nikki flores song, so immediately obviously a clutchwork, but why? i guess they are sometimes just very adept at scripting out little snapshots of complicated teen angst verite, and then wrapping them up in a nice bow of a cute hook or line. pretty good at playing around with their narrators, too.

my fave Clutch work this year is Cristal Q's "Impala Boy". kinda endearing how, 50 years on, teenagers are still singing Chevy love songs! (i don't know shit about cars, i only know what brands are popular with hip hop/r&b dudes & dudettes, so when i was talking once to a car-fiend friend of mine i casually bragged with my newly acquired knowledge: "so, them Impalas... huh?". he gave me this nonplussed look, a la: "what, that american crap?".)

actually, i prefer the earlier version of "Impala Boy" that was doing the rounds at the beginning of '07: more sparse but breezier, prettier, lone late night city street fresh.

wau!

shit makes so much sense it's no wonder i never thought of it before

for very agreeable corny cruisy vintage neptunes fun, new t-pain production for charlie wilson is YOU

also that new snoop song still cracks me up

but not in a bad way all told

Mario's "Crying Out for Me" is quite lovely. I actually really liked "How Do I Breathe" as well but it really didn't seem to go anywhere chart-wise. Sadly, I don't think he's ever gonna get much attention again after "Let Me Love You".

yeah, I still like his voice, am probably gonna pick up the album, but Mario's buzz is pretty low even in his hometown these days.

Yeah, a totally different topic here but there seems to be absolutely no rhyme or reason to how to generate/maintain buzz for an artist. It's a fractured musical landscape out there these days.

I think it's especially hard in R&B, sometimes it doesn't seem like there's any pattern to which singers have a religiously loyal following and which ones fall behind with the next fickle change of trends.

What the hell happened to Alicia Key's voice? She sounds horrible.

That's what happens when you receive professional training.

That's not even it. She sounds like she's trying too hard to sound unprofessional.

I was reading the EW cover story on her that keeps talking about her "raw and intense new vocal style," but yeah, it does kinda suck. It only really bothers me on "No One" and a couple other songs, though, it sounds a little more natural on the rest of the album.

All I know is her new "raw and intense new vocal style" sounds like ass. The second single isn't as totally unlistenable as "No One", though.

i just said this on teenpop, but unfortunately, she listened to too much Keyshia Cole.

OTM

Actually her vocal on "No One" makes much more sense on the reggae remix. In that context it sounds a bit Tanya Stephens-ish, the harshness = humannness.

Agree it's bizarre on the original though.

The-Dream's album is INCREDIBLE. Like, "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL OF MY LIFE?!?" incredible. Everyone should go buy it.

REally? That good Brainwasher? I really liked "Falsetto" and "Livin' A Lie" was okay, but I didnt' know if the eh, eh, ehs would grow tiresome.

"Falsetto" is awful. Fuck that guy.

anyone heard the Blige album? It's a punchier The Breakthrough. I've learned to really like "Just Fine."

Alex you are insane.

matt- There are lots of "ehs" and "ellas" and "ooohs" and "AYYs" and "woos", but they actually aren't annoying or grating at all. They add to the atmosphere - in most of the spongs there's lots of weird litte things goin on with the production, and The-Dream's layered vocals and vocoders and other effects meld nicely to create this really cool sound. I suck at writing about music, so yeah.. just check it out it's a really strong record front-to-back.

Alfred- I really like Growing Pains (even moreso than The Breakthrough), there isn't like an obvious standout like "Baggage" or "No One Will Do" but it has a cool sound.. "Roses" is one of her best songs in a while.. "Feel Like A Woman", "Hurt Again," "Fade Away" "Smoke"...

And it works better as an full album (besides "Grown Woman" and "Work That).. there's a cohesive, snythy washed out sound to it..

"Come To Me (Peace)" is very U2.

Alex will probably hate it since The-Dream wrote about 10 songs on it.