thread of miguel

there are gay rumors about every (and i mean EVERY) successful male R&B singer but Miguel is one of the few where it became an overt component of his interviews/career narrative right off the bat without any real basis for it

I like frank ocean but I don't want to fuck to it. Point miguel.

^

lol at the idea of anyone who posts to a message board making decisions about music based on their sex lives

speak for yourself?

anyway, you can totally have sex to frank ocean if that's really your criteria

(also as meaghan garvey pointed out this whole thing leaves out dawn richard, who is also on their level, but maybe these unimaginative writers can only engage in one othering act at a time)

― maura, Wednesday, 8 July 2015 15:19 (Yesterday) Permalink

Brainwasher pointed out jazmine Sullivan's album is continually left out in these things (and maybe a more populist/popular example than DR)

I want to like JS more but every time I listen to her I'm just kind of like "smart songwriting" but nothing else draws me in.

anyway, you can totally have sex to frank ocean if that's really your criteria

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, July 8, 2015 9:40 PM Bookmark

I guess, but his music (and he himself) are kind of weirdly unsexy to me.

what is this "music to have sex to" thing?

i am disgusted that any of you people are having sex

srsly

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

I think we can all agree that sex is weird and gross

this album on the other hand just seems to get better every time I hear it, and I really don't get complaints about the sequencing

I feel like you guys are just grasping at "people we also like" straws to bring up Dawn or Jazmine as supposedly obvious female contemporaries of Miguel/Frank when Tinashe and Janelle Monae and Jhene Aiko are a much better fit

what if ~they're all different~

They're all very different! I just think "why bring up Frank Ocean and not Dawn Richard" sounds disingenuous or like you expect every writer to conform to your not very widely shared view of the R&B landscape

Disingenuous more so because it skirts around the reasons why gender still plays a disproportionate role in determining how we evaluate singers (or artists in general).

I think Tinashe is a good fit!

Yeah, the reach to Dawn Richards and not say, Jazmine Sullivan or Tamar Braxton or K. Michelle also feels representative of a disconnect between who a small set of music critics want to be relevant to R&B at the moment and who the average R&B listener is actually listening to on a regular basis.

hmm well no I don't hear much Sullivan, Braxton, or K Michelle in Miguel.

also: "a disconnect between who a small set of music critics want to be relevant to R&B at the moment" and R&B listeners is non-existent. IF you listen to R&B or adult R&B radio, you're sharing tastes with listeners.

Yeah Jazmine is more like a contemporary of Ne-Yo, and K. Michelle and Tamar are like throwbacks to that cohort who just happened to be late bloomers commercially. they feel like a very different breed to me than the eclectic Tumblr Coachella cool kid wave of Miguel/Frank/Weeknd/Jhene/Tinashe/etc.

Jazmine's stuff is notably less afrofuturist and experimental
no less wonderful

also: "a disconnect between who a small set of music critics want to be relevant to R&B at the moment" and R&B listeners is non-existent. IF you listen to R&B or adult R&B radio, you're sharing tastes with listeners.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, July 9, 2015 1:59 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, but Dawn isn't getting played on R&B or adult R&B radio, unlike Miguel/Frank/Weeknd/Jhene/Tinashe, which is where my point about the disconnect comes in. That she became the go-to here was an odd choice to me given that the odds of someone outside of ILX thinking of her before they'd think Tinashes or Jhene or any of the women I mentioned are extremely small, even when thinking in terms of like Tumblr coachella buzzword dead signifier R&B.

I guess I wasn't clear. I meant that most of us on ILM who love Dawn Ricahrd also listen to K Michelle, Ledisi, Keyshia Cole, and other R&B and adult R&B standbys.

dunno if that's true honestly. K. Michelle got a little groundswell on the last year-end poll but nothing near the votes that Dawn's records have gotten.

oh the poll

Haven't been following the conversation around this record too much. Has Frank Ocean really been invoked that often?

I go by seeing the same ten or eleven names in R&B threads.

Haven't been following the conversation around this record too much. Has Frank Ocean really been invoked that often?

― Evan R, Thursday, July 9, 2015 5:51 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in Miguel reviews? it was finally starting to become less of a ubiquitous theme (save for the Pitchfork review) before Miguel's little interview this week made FO a permanent part of his narrative.

Ha. I do think three or four years ago the comparisons were fair game—two extremely talented R&B singers, each carving their own path, and it was interesting to compare and contrast their visions. And there is some truth to the narrative that Miguel saw R&B changing, opening up to different styles and approaches, and really ran with it. But all that is pretty old news by now.

I've read many essays and reviews alleging that 808 & Heartbreak and Drake and whatnot changed it. How was it changing? Serious question.

yeah it felt pretty forced to me in 2012 but a little inevitable, and they were both L.A.-based guys. but in 2015, seeing "alt R&B" in every Miguel review, and "PBR&B" in the first sentence of The Weeknd's wiki entry, just shows how much those hacky angles stuck with people and continue to shape how they see these artists. (xp)

Here's how Tom Breihan wrote about Kaleidoscope Dream around its release:

A few years ago, Miguel seemed like the sort of fabulously talented R&B singer who routinely gets lost in the major-label shuffle. His “All I Want Is You” was a great single, but ask Jazmine Sullivan what a great single or two have done for her. But then the whole hipster-soul wave of the Weeknd and Frank Ocean happened last year, and you could almost see the figurative lightbulb clicking on over Miguel’s head all the way on the other side of the country. Around the same time Drake was releasing Take Care, his own excellently fleshed-out take on that sound, Miguel was starting to toss out his series of Art Dealer Chic EPs for free online.

Where that narrative falls apart for me, of course, (beyond the "hipster soul" tag and how "PBR&B" was tagged as a more fringe, indie-driven movement than it really was, just because R&B trends happened to start overlapping with indie tastes) is Miguel had been doing outsider-y, avant R&B since at least 2008, with his Mischief tape

Worth noting that a lot of what ended up on AIWIY was originally written with the intent of being given to other artists, so if it's not as representative of his ~singular vision~ as KD/Wildheart, that's probably a part of it.

yeah i don't fault anyone for hearing "All I Want Is You" and figuring that was Miguel's deal for a while, i certainly didn't dig any further until i fell in love with "Sure Thing"

just the way he sings in the first verse of the first song + the effects my reaction was :D:D:D yes yes yes yes

first six tracks completely sold me on miguel's first album.
Also, My Piece. never clicked with the rest.

"Teach Me" still makes me melt

yeah "teach me" might still be my favorite song of his

do not rate it all, playing now

Most of AIWIY works for Miguel despite the tracks apparently being earmarked for other singers. The only one I feel doesn't work is Pay Me.

i think i like miguel's dirtbag style in a way that does not jibe with ilxhivemind because i love "the valley" and "pay me"

I love The Valley, too. There's something about Pay Me that just sounds like it was written for a different voice on top of using then-trendy production choices. Feels forced, unlike the rest of the tracks on that first album.

yeah, it's not so much that it's a bad song it just doesn't work as a miguel song at all

i like "The Valley" but it's like Exhibit A in the album's poor sequencing, would sound so much better if it showed up in the second half after you're totally immersed in his world

The Valley would stick out like a sore thumb wherever it sat on the tracklisting, not sure that straightforward sleaze is a particularly good look for Miguel, he's at his best when he's playing with perspectives and that one just feels forced.

god, I really love Hollywood dreams