Rolling R&B Thread 2007

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.

well, as I said upthread, "'Just Fine' is the only reason he isn't dead to me," so maybe I'd like his other songs with Mary. I really can't stand his voice, though, and for the most part he seems really lyrically and musically limited. even the whole sex noise schtick on "Falsetto" was already done by Trey Songz on that Twista single a couple years ago.

Roses: http://youtube.com/watch?v=UpXlJoB8jX8

I think he's a really good lyricist actually, he has pretty interesting/quirky takes on over-done subjects. But if you can't take the voice I can understand that.. I think it's great!

well it was always the case that any brutally reasonable person would make light work of tearing thedream to pieces; 'falsetto' is that bad (just str8 terrible) the guy's prince delusions are ridiculous, he sounds and acts like i dunno, the creep from galaxy high copping a bitter little attitude, and just generally the whole vibe is completely thin and banal. however, i have kept coming back to the album a fair bit this last week, and can only conclude that that banality is part of the attraction somehow. ("WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL OF MY LIFE?!?" = he was the dishwater, in your sink) (too easy) it is not even as though i can particularly claim any one song to be a resounding success - even the notionally interesting, conflicted stuff like 'nikki' seems so clearly laid out as to seem careless and tossed-off rather than victim to any real sort of heartbreak or anything.

weird though, cos i can also imagine him to have written 'roses', and that pretty much blows everyone else (certainly your keyshias and jill scotts) out of the water when it comes to heavyweight emotion business. guess it could just be the voice, or the delivery at very least.

really enjoyed the mjb record the couple times i've heard it, anyway.

ps is it really such a mystery why there's no buzz for mario? he grew into an ugly young man with silly nostrils, ne-yo basically jacked 'let me love you' for his career jump-off, he fell off the radar but not quite far enough off the radar so there weren't what felt like years of tentative leaked first singles, the songs that did make the final cut are pretty indistinct... i could go on

i mean i know chris brown's made much the same mistakes and managed to scrape it (i think? how's he selling?) but he then did dance his little feet off all year. (also, a t-pain single.)

There's a screwed and chopped version of "Falsetto" by DJ Black Boi which is a gazillion times better than the original.

see, while i would normally say that bringing up a screwed & chopped rmx is a social faux pas on a par with using the fish knife to gouge your host's eye out, this 'falsetto' one is quite good cos the d:ream's voice sounds half-normal now all pitched down. good stuff!

he sounds quite fun when he guest sings/raps on ladies' tunes. for years i wondered, who is nivea and rasheeda's new lesbian friend?

*smh*

wtf is galaxy high

you ppl are old.

hey in england we got that shit in the 90s, don't hate

also brainwasher need i remind you that you did say "cool sound" twice in that post upthread

yah I have a "limited vocabulary"

anyway this new janet song is really hot.

so is the new LeToya song, though I wish it had more LeToya on it. Why does a 3 minute song need 3 guest rappers?

janet jackson - feedback

RhinestoneGlove (1 minute ago)
best song ever

julienn1 (4 minutes ago)
I fucking love it !!! Wow !

ChynaFox (8 minutes ago)
I like this song, but...

HEAVY LIKE A FIRST DAY PERIOD????

DAMN, Janet!

Uncalled for!

envyii (10 minutes ago)
this shit is hot I can already see her killin it in the video!! I need to hear it in the club this beat is sick!!! ok Janet

raymondb316 (23 minutes ago)
I LOVE IT THANK U JANET

superstarpaulc (24 minutes ago)
0
fantastic.song is very catchy.janet is back for sure...

letoya still on that queen of houston bullshit when her best song is a classic just blaze beat. there is nothing good about that new tune.

janet on the britney train, oh dear.

letoya reminds me that i didn't mind big kuntry's new single feat trey 'cheaper than lloyd' songz

http://www.zshare.net/audio/5116057d9e0820/

it is somehow much better than the timbahandz biting it betrays?

lol "cheaper than lloyd"

it's funny 'cuz it's true.

omg those janet comments are hilarious. as for the song, it's good but that's about it. it is pretty fuckin britney.

it feels like she's trying too hard to sound like something else. i just read something about how the hype will be that she's the competition for the new mariah and beyonce records. and just the sound + the sound of her voice come off rather contrived to me.

ironically you could have said the exact same about her rank hype single before the last album - 'lookout weekend' cover i think?

or Call On Me or whatever the fuck that was called