How good is 'American Boy' by Estelle?

love in this club and like that new mario song don't seem that out of the ordinary or that much like crunk to me-- just good r&bish songs but nothing worthy of trendwatching as far as polow goes

"falsetto" and "love in this club" being the on-trend ones, "like you'll never see me again" and "i remember" = pretty standard ballads.

sarge: Well, of course. There are always going to be vanilla ballads on r&b radio, but that's not really a trend so much as a fact of life.

What's "I Remember"?

do any of the ones just mentioned fit into the "Please don't stop the music" 4x4 trend? isn't "with you" like chris brown's country song ???

keyshia cole

and the way i are and don't stop the music aren't r&b songs and it's kinda stupid for people to treat them as such imo just because they are done by vaguely r&B artists

nope, none fit the 4/4 trend... but you should check out "ditch that" by the-dream if you haven't heard it

yeah some of the album tracks on love/hate and that new ne-yo song are more of where i see the 4x4 trend

love that song

xp house pretty much is r&b though

Sarge: they aren't really, but their certainly being listened to and absorbed by r&b audiences and more importantly, r&b artists. Also, "Sexyback" is the true starting point of this trend.

"My Love" !!!!

for both trends maybe

sarge how are they not R&B

of those two i could only buy the way i are as r&b because of tim's past and cuz keri hilson is on it, 'please don't stop the music' isn't that far away from 's.o.s.' or 'break it off' or other stuff that rihanna has done

"My Love" = starting point of the trance-synth side of the coin, but "Sexyback" for the 4x4 beat. (Then Timbo got the great idea to combine the two for "The Way I Are".)

yeah "my love" was kind of the start of this whole trance&b thing no?

I can see why sarge wouldn't consider DSTM R&B, since Rihanna is pretty much a pure pop singer

yo americans, if you're so big up on this house r&b stuff, you guys should check out some of the biggest R&B singles in the UK: Kelly Rowland - Work (Freemasons Remix) and Taio Cruz - Come On Girl

as for what rev says about r&b people consuming those songs-- if youre talking about radio i think that's only because urban top 40 and pop radio have some type of overlap, i mean the station here that plays ruben studdard and gerald levert would never play don't stop the music or the way i are where as the stations that play flo rida and miley cyrus play those two all day

love in this club is basically a rip of my love imo-- the way the synths are so layered in the first 5 seconds of both, its almost identical

Okay, so where do things like "Sensual Seduction" and "I'm So High/"She's So Fly" fit into this picture?

well the station that plays reuben studard and gerald levert is like.. urban ac.. which isn't really the go-to format for cutting edge music... but "Way I Are" got played on Ryhthmic/R&B and Urban stations.. as well as top 40/pop.

i think both are great though xp

as for tim-- i've noticed more of like, i don't even know what you'd call it ( i always think of the way he stutters the drums), but like on "ayo technology" or "ice box" or "anonymous" or "elevator". those are the songs i think of when i think of tim's style/trend of the past few years, not really "sexy back" or even the furtado stuff

xp tot he rev: that shit's all coming from Miami

(maybe not geographically but that whole Miami sound which can probably be associated with what we're calling trance/crunk whatever)

"i'm so high" has a sort of electro thing going on, but I guess sonically it would fit with the trance&b type stuff

I would buy the whole "My Love" thing except that it's almost twice as FAST as all the other shit in the trance-crunk trend...

fwiw, the r&b radio station here would never in a million years play Studdard or Levert (or Cyrus), but they certainly have played the hell out of "The Way I Are", and to a lesser extent, "Don't Stop the Music".

Also, "Love in the Club" is totally influenced by other things that have come out since "My Love". There's more than a year's worth of influence cycles left out of that equation.

sensual seduction is kind of just a straight t-pain rip that could only be pulled off by a dude with a weird history like snoop-- musically it's not that far off from like 'bartender' or something

i love i'm so high because it sounds kinda timeless to me-- it could be from 3 years ago or 3 weeks ago or 3 years from now imo. no vocoder, no 4x4 shit etc.

re: Miami

see: the Runners, Cool & Dre, and now Shawty Redd (not from MIA I know) is really running with that sound...big washy wynths, 120ish bpms, smooth vibe a la "Sensual seduction" it's VIBE music and it rules, watch Lil Wayne get way into this sound

this is getting confusing now

yeah it is lol

yeah matrix otm re miami sound-- it's more of a vibe, esp in the airy synths. that ball greezy track is another

I don't know if I consider it a "miami sound" per se because Timbo, The-Dream, Polow, Ryan Leslie, etc. aren't from miami

and they've all done that smooth, syhth-washed sound

yes that Grindmode is a perfect example of what I'm talking about...notice Rick Ross's whole album sounds like this besides one Bink production

and Ball greezy, and that Static ft. Wayne, and Shawty Redd "Drifter"

"My Love" is 60 bpm!

otm re Miami as the center of the trance-crunk thing, tho

Lollipop doesn't really sound like that at all though!

the thing that i think is the difference between grind mode/ball greezy/lollipop/whatever we are calling "miami sound" is the simplicity, like polow/dream stuff is just way busier (not nec in a bad way), but that's what really struck me about "i'm so high"

Lollipop = "Low" + T-Pain

also spaciousness in the miami stuff

wait low has t-pain on it

Ryan Leslie I'll give you but the otehr stuff is different, it's more of a disco/rnb throwback stuff, which obviously blew up with "Sensual Seduction" but has been bubbling with a bunch of tracks that come more from RnB than they do from hip hop or crunk

"My Love" is 120 bpm in my book

aaaaannnndd "Lollipop" = some weird exception that I have not yet wrapped my head around

it's really cute watching you guys try to conflate about 5 different trends being followed by 50 different artists into one tidy narrative.

so what I'm saying is "Love in this club" et al DO NOT EQUAL "miami sound"

why do you hate fun alex

alex in b'more:
http://www.rondak.org/Images/publicfigs/cop4.jpg

wait til "Miami Vice" gets dropped as Weezy's second single (fingers crossed)...see rolling ringtone for a link

I don't think anyone's trying to squash this all into one narrative.

wait low has t-pain on it

-- J0rdan S., Friday, March 28, 2008 8:53 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

yo this was amazing

I don't know if I can agree with you guys painting the "miami sound" as cool and breezy - where does "i'm so hood" fit in? "the boss"? "we takin over"? hell, "drifter" is pretty intense - and isn't shawty redd from atl?

just cuz it comes from MIA doesnt mean it has to fit this sound we're talking about