Beyonce - 4

she is though! and if the swag is strong, who cares?

i mean yeah ok i do see what you're saying though, but it's just a little too pricey as reductions go imo.

i tend to think of ripping off as something that people try to keep people from noticing, or don't admit to. born this way/express yourself. whereas that this song is beyoncé over pon de floor is the point of it, really.

it's not just "stuff jacking stuff" though is it, it's reusing the actual same beat. "riddimification" is just a handy way of clearing things up for people who think she's just copying/ripping off

― lex pretend, Tuesday, April 19, 2011 3:33 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

and by afaict equating just the snare drum pattern with the entire "beat" (i.e. all of the instrumentation) you're either willfully bending the truth or demonstrating an inability to tell the difference

lol @ gaga trying to "get away" with biting a gigantic iconic hit but beyonce using a bit of a bloggy niche dance hit is all about low key transparency

um...

the entire "Pon De Floor" beat is in there; the clavicle, the sub bass drum, all of the sound effects... the only thing missing is the lead synth line

my "afaict" was an insufficient CYA move for not bothing to re-listen to both songs before posting, i see

lol

although fwiw my point stands that if there is a prominent musical element like a synth line added or subtracted from one track to the next "riddim" is probably not the right term to use

i havent heard the CDQ version yet but...

the non-demo of this that incorporates those squealing synths from 'pon de floor' is better than the version that leaked last night

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, April 19, 2011 8:20 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark

so then Wayne Wonder, Lumidee and Sean Paul didn't all use the Diwali riddim?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFnwBtLrIYI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09qDvl4tB1c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmxD7jDuPR0

note that prominent musical elements (synth lines) have been added/subtracted across all three songs

aw i really want to hear this and it's gone from youtube and i'm not going sketchier than that at the office

(ftr I don't think this is a "riddim" either, but that is mostly because there is zero connection between Beyonce and dancehall; it seems a lot easier to make that argument that it does to make easily-disprovable-via-legit-riddim-examples arguments)

yeah - is there a term for rappers rapping over existing beats on mixtapes?

beat-jacking, r|t|c already alluded to it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vsLcNJdF9k

can we not all save ourselves the bother and just agree that there are many shades of grey to the matter, too many to enumerate, and that i am probably right

lol dude I think were already at that point

at least, I was

am with brainwasher so far on this tune anyway

coincidentally enough wrt to this beat, my steady u__u in the face of much energy expended is reminding me of listening to 'lose my breath' for the first time

yeah that's a very good comparison point, i had a deja vu of Beyonce trying way too hard feeling listening to this that probably came from that (and not "Deja Vu," which was not trying enough)

this song is kinda nutty :)

saying that, i think if i were an exec i would have released this first too - if the video proves suitably spectacular then a refamiliarising bey waterboarding is all the people want for starters anyway, and this is that

it's nice that she went with a song title that'll easily feed into the "omg b hates rihanna" blog narrative too

"lose my breath" is still amazing

hopefully the video from this stays far the fuck away from m.i.a./"rude boy" territory

"lose my breath" is still amazing

― lex pretend, Tuesday, April 19, 2011 1:45 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

rly tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTlWtG8qXvo&feature=player_embedded#at=20

^^^Lol. Maybe I'm getting a little older, but really is the song that bad??? Also, this is like her 4th solo album, and her 8th or 9th overall. The woman can only make so many "classics"/"bangers" consecutively. I think she can afford to experiment or stumble at this moment of her career.

This also reminds me of how her rabid fans hated "Deja Vu" and tried to create a petition for it and the video to be removed. In addition, I would like to know how more women/girls thinks of the song. We already have Maura who is the most balanced critique so far. The others have been gay men, and well we already noted how drag queen parody can go into full effect.

To clarify, I'm not saying that gay men don't have the right or the perspective to analyze/review pop music by female artists. If anything, gay men's critiques are highly valuable. But with forums like popjustice and the likes they can be quite shrill and remind me that despite the social connotations of being gay, we are still men at the end of the day.

I'm just saying I would like to see more women's/girl's reaction to the song, and yes even straight men too.

I don't think this song is all that but lsb otm

I don't necessarily mind Beyoncé's brand of feminism so much - it's an essential part of who she is as an artist and probably as a person - but I do feel as though it's steadily regressed over the years, from being pretty sophisticated and smart back at the beginning of Destiny's Child ("Hey Ladies", "Bug A Boo" & others) to now just being peurile hollering like "Single Ladies" and this, which seems to be her most basic female empowerment anthem to date.

Though when she says "Who runs the world? Girls!", I think the "girls" bit is just being used to cover up what she's really thinking: "I run this motha!". Letoya, LaTavia and Michelle for starters know Beyoncé doesn't care an ounce for empowering womankind in general.

And that's what I love about her.

Yeah, the "Girls!" makes the whole song sound kind of silly for a grown-ass woman to be singing.

Poor LaTavia...

i get the impression from her songs that beyoncé is a really private person who is determined not to let anyone see the "real her", and who's got the chutzpah to get away with that. and that she really, really loves money. not (just) in the flashy bling way that's pop's common currency, i mean really loves money like a hedge fund owner loves money. actually beyoncé is pretty much the hedge fund of the pop industry.

This is pretty OTM.

Also: Celine Dion doesn't "do" camp intentionally. Dion doesn't know what camp is -- she married an septuagenarian with the foulest mullet ever created.

and that is the most camp thing of all!

which is how camp should work!

SO basically this is Beyonce's "Hollaback Girl," then?

Poor LaTavia...

I don't know if this is snarky or not, but she actually did go through a hard time after the Destiny's Child break-up.

No snark in the least. Of all the ex-members, I have the most sympathy for her after her appearance on Real Housewives of Atlanta. Matthew Knowles really did a number on those girls and Beyoncé and Kelly aren't exactly innocent in the purging of the "bad seeds" as Beyoncé so aptly put it. As some of you mentioned upthread, she really does have a love affair with money and comes from a hardcore capitalist family. Something about her has always rubbed me the wrong way, but I don't question her abilities as a performer. The "Single Ladies" clip is still as impressive as the first time I viewed it.

Beyonce recently fired her father as her manager after all these years. Also, Latoya stated that she is on civil terms with Kelly and Beyonce. I'm not saying Beyonce is trying to reform, but for someone who is known to have a hard, capitalist shell there has to be some chinks in her armor.

Either that or she is a very calculating businesswoman. Then again, did any of us cared when a male artists like Jay-Z dismantled Roc-a-Fella?

I know I didn't. A matter of fact, I felt like Jay-Z (like Beyonce) know when to jump ship at the right time.

whole lot of people ARE butthurt about how Jay did the Roc or disappointed in how he handled it though

Oh I know the hip hop world hates it. I was talking about "us" specifically on ILM.

wow.

did any of us cared when a male artists like Jay-Z dismantled Roc-a-Fella?

I did!

What a surprise Switch did something similar for Christina Aguilera for Bionic. The instrumentals are essentially the same:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ2niKaeW74

Dion doesn't know what camp is -- she married an septuagenarian with the foulest mullet ever created.

and let's not forget her anne geddes calendar

That X-tina cover reminds me of this one Mega Man game where after you defeat a boss Mega Man is standing there and half of him is see-through robot circuitry.

Also, yay Beyonce! I've had a thing for her since the first time I heard Destiny's Child, and it's definitely not going away w this song.

This is a straight up banger but I hope the final version cuts the bit where Beyonce appears to wander off in a different direction before remembering where she is and what she's supposed to be doing.

this is brilliant

and by afaict equating just the snare drum pattern with the entire "beat" (i.e. all of the instrumentation) you're either willfully bending the truth or demonstrating an inability to tell the difference

"All of the instrumentation" isn't actually the beat though, the beat IS the snare drum pattern and the other percussive noises around it, and it's there in its entirety.

/4/ is her most naturalist work, "Run The World" aside; it's the album on which she assumes the mantle of pop's best vocalist by her emphasis on effortlessness

This reads to me as a faulty premise. Most of 4 (aside from "I Miss You") is Beyoncé indulging in the purest form of her forced, muscular yelling-as-singing, with every popped vein on her neck sticking out of almost every track. For me, it's the album where Holleroncyé clicked for more than three isolated tracks on the album.

I think we're agreeing in substance while disagreeing on terms - yes it's all muscular yelling-as-singing, but if it's forced in a strict physical sense, I think she inhabits the persona that vocal approach tends to create very comfortably.

I remember when she performed "1 + 1" on Idol, and it was kinda like "children, my shower improvisations have more overblown heartbreak than your best ever "I Have Nothing" rendition."

Her worst single imo