krayzie said:

What vainandy is saying if he had to choose between listening to James Brown sing "Sex Machine" and Whitney Houston sing "The Greatest Love of All," he's going to take James Brown. He's going to take the act making music that's reflective of black popular contemporary music over the act making deliberately crossover-oriented pop songs that have little to no appeal to most members of the soul music audience.

And even though vainandy prefers the funkier stuff in general, his preferences do extend beyond that. For instance, I'm sure he would gravitate toward a Maze featuring Frankie Beverly or Stylistics ballad before taking any Beyonce song. His issues with the soul music scene today are focused on the general hip-hop-dominated, downbeat nature of a genre that has been the same since the early 1990s.
[Edited 10/31/07 6:28am]

As many of you have said,today's R&B is too damn slow! Old School jams like "You're The One For Me" by D-Train (1982),"I'm Freaky" by O'bryan (1983),and "The Groove Line" by Heatwave (1978) are FAST with strong,infectious grooves that force you to get up and dance!! You just couldn't sit still while one of those songs was playing. These days,most R&B songs are so slow,it puts me to sleep.What's with all this boring,midtempo,smoothed out crap?? Where are the relentless funk jams??!! Damn!

SoulAlive said:

Not only that, but in terms of tempo there is not much difference between an "uptempo" song like R. Kelly's "Ignition" and what is considered a ballad, save the cadence is slightly faster on "Ignition." What is funny is watching someone dancing to a song like "Da Soulja Boy" like it is as fast as Heatwave's "The Groove Line" or Chuck Brown and The Soul Searchers' "Bustin' Loose."

Najee said:

Exactly.

Timmy84 said:

Same here Those two genres need to be separated.

SoulAlive said:

Not do I hope for an ugly divorce, I hope there will be some casualties (artists) who get caught in the crossfire, like R. Kelly. During the last such seismic shift in soul music, the romantic lead singer (see Freddie Jackson) was the casualty. In fact, such shifts usually are marked by the carcasses of prominent artists who helped epitomize the outgoing style.
[Edited 10/31/07 7:19am]

Najee said:

"Bump and Grind" is a bad example. The drums are actually pretty hard on that. Even though the tempo had slowed there was still a trace of new jack swing in the rhythm. "Your Body's Calling" was also hard hitting with a funky guitar part. It was with his next album in 1995 that you started to hear the quieter pitter-patter sound taking over his music.

Cinnie said:

Y'all are acting like Mary should take no responsibilty herself. The thing that disappoints me with her is that I've heard her time after time saying how her heart is in soul music. She'll talk about an old soul song and say out loud "Why don't they make music like that anymore?", and I'm listening to her, thinking "Why don't YOU make it? You're the one with the spotlight." That's the thing. She feels the same way as many of us do, and yet she makes the same soul-free music as everyone else. It ain't like she's some newcomer who needs to kiss ass to get in the door. She's in a position to improve the situation and she actually makes it worse by her example. At this point there's no-one to blame for that but Mary herself.

LittleBLUECorvette said:

Yeah, I've thought this myself recently. Not all great r&b singers came from church, but the vast majority did, and those singers set the standards for others. So for example, even though MJ didn't sing in church, he grew up watching singers who learnt their whole style from the church. Therefore that training ground kept the overall standards high, but this issue effects performance more than music itself. We all know it's the double whammy of technology and hip hop that really messed up the music. Technology cos it marginalised musicians; and hip hop cos it wiped out melody and made everyone try to act hard.

Harlepolis said:

Yeah, but the question is why has sincerity disappeared, and has it really disappeared, or is it just that the spotlight is no longer on the sincere? Maybe the sincere ones are just starving away while the fakers enjoy their time in the sun.

midnightmover said:

Alot of factors that make a whole new thread

It all boils down to people's disinterest in sincerity, I think. I don't wanna generalize but I cannot help not to,,,,esp when I look @ the majority of this emerged generation.

midnightmover said:

You can play "Bump and Grind" and "You Body's Calling" and they don't sound dated compared to today's music, which was my point. That's mostly because the music genre hasn't changed since the mid-1990s. Compared to other periods, musical phases changed roughly every seven years.

Najee said:

No offense Naj, you're a cool guy, but that's your age talking. Listen to the drum sound on those tracks from 1993 then compare it to the tracks on his next album from 1995 and you'll hear there's a massive difference. Everyone I knew commented on it at the time. I have a recent experience of this too, because a friend of mine (who is in danger of becoming an ex-friend if he doesn't improve his musical taste) actually has R's Greatest Hits, but he never listened to the earlier tracks. He was playing the album when I visited him so I told him to skip to "Bump and Grind". Well, the first thing he said when it came on was how it sounded like "old swingbeat".

What you're saying about styles standing still since the mid 90s is true (in fashion as much as music), but those early R Kelly tunes came out before the change had been completed. The tempo had already been dropped yes, but the sound hadn't totally gone soft.

shorttrini said:

Who said she had to rely on samples?


I wouldn't say the lyrics suck at all. Hell, I think My Life is absolutely fantastic; I'd say it makes a good case for creative sampling while being the best things both Mary and Puffy have ever done.


I certainly agree with that. AFAIC, the radio is lost. I stopped listening in 2001 and I don't miss it in the slightest.

midnightmover said:

It still doesn't matter, because it's the same prevailing elements in songs today -- slower tempo to downbeat sounds, hip-hop elements (R. Kelly's "Born into the '90s" and "12 Play" were inspired by Guy and Aaron Hall's stylings of the New Jack Swing, which is a hybrid/precursor) and sexually aggressive lyrics. Songs like "Bump and Grind" are the progenitors of the same style.

It's not a comparison similar to, say, hearing Marvin Gaye's music in the early 1970s and his music in the early 1980s. For that matter, there is a huge style drift from Gaye's "I Want You" era to his "Sexual Healing" music. Your friend is going on about a slight difference in a drum pattern; what I'm talking about going from, say, the Freddie Jackson-style romantic singers to the R. Kelly-type artists.
[Edited 10/31/07 16:10pm]

AlexdeParis said:[quote]

shorttrini said:

Most of what she did early in her career and especially on her first 2 cd's were samples. She just sang over them....Yes, they were used in a semi-creative way; but non the less, they were mostly samples. "My Life", is good because, everyone can relate to pain in one way or another and this is what she sang about. After that album, she played on the fact that she was in pain. Place a good beat around that and people brought it. I for one, got tired of her always being in pain. To me the best thing that she has ever done was, "Not Goin Cry", with Babyface and a track called, "Everyday it rains", from The Show, soundtrack. Those tracks did not rely on much of a sample and because of that, you had to really listen to Mary's voice, which is one of the best voices of thid generation.

AlexdeParis said:[quote]

shorttrini said:

Most of what she did early in her career and especially on her first 2 cd's were samples. She just sang over them....Yes, they were used in a semi-creative way; but non the less, they were mostly samples. "My Life", is good because, everyone can relate to pain in one way or another and this is what she sang about. After that album, she played on the fact that she was in pain. Place a good beat around that and people brought it. I for one, got tired of her always being in pain. To me the best thing that she has ever done was, "Not Goin Cry", with Babyface and a track called, "Everyday it rains", from The Show, soundtrack. Those tracks did not rely on much of a sample and because of that, you had to really listen to Mary's voice, which is one of the best voices of thid generation.

Someone who is bringing the heat but never raised in church.....cause he's jewish.....

http://www.youtube.com/wa...Qna0zXU36o

skip to 1:30 into it.

Saw him live this past week, he was amazing. Sadly he is often overlooked and underestimated.
[Edited 11/1/07 3:06am]

shorttrini said:

I'll agree with "Not Gon' Cry" -- it's one of her best singles. OTOH, "Everyday It Rains" always felt like Mary-by-numbers to me (and it's mostly just Mary singing over a sample).
[Edited 11/1/07 3:10am]

TotalAlisa said:

That could be true but it can definitely be argued that the industry is no environment for a child. A whole litany of child performers who were coached to get into the spotlight ended up with a lot of problems.

Do you know for a fact this modern lot weren't raised in the church? Has church attendance really dropped in the USA? I doubt it.

I think music just generally runs out of ideas more than anything, its all been done before and Chris Brown, Mario et al aren't going to offer anything fresh.

I think 90s R&B was great though. R. Kelly, early Boyz II Men, Jodeci, The Tony Rich Project, D'Angelo, Lynden David Hall, some Blackstreet, early Dave Hollister...
[Edited 11/1/07 5:18am]

Najee said:

I agree with the bulk of what you're saying, but one of the main charges against modern r&b is it's weak drum sound and lack of bass. Those charges cannot be levelled at "Bump and Grind".

Apparently you don't hate everything I represent because you are on a site dedicated to Prince, a man who made funk. Also, you have Stevie Wonder in your avatar, another man who made funk. And what were both Prince and Stevie? They were musicians, they weren't just some boring ass singers with boring bullshit music behind their singing like Shitney Ass Houston, Mariah Scary, and so many others. They had good strong music. Music is this difference.




The shit that these kids today think is ass-shakable really isn't. It's too damn slow. And why is it too damn slow? Because of all the great "singers" that you like singing really great but slowing the tempo completely down and killing any funk, rhythm, and basically any trace of ass-shakablity. This is what opened the doors for the dull bullshit that's all over the radio today and this is why kids today think that something as slow as a damn opera tempo is appropriate to shake ass to. If the music that I like had any influence on today's listeners, they would all be listening to hardcore funk like Cameo, The Barkays, Con Funk Shun, or Midnight Star. Instead, they are listening to rap music and shit hop that is just as slow as someone like Shitney Houston but yet they think it's something for the dance floor.

The difference between me and the kids today, is my music is actually ass shakable. Their music isn't.



Producers huh? I'm part of that generation? Apparently you must think I grew up in the sellout late 1980s. Hell no. I grew up in the 1970s and early 1980s. I grew up on funk bands that didn't have producers. The band themselves wrote, produced, and played all their instruments. The music wasn't producer driven when I was growing up. If there was a producer, he was part of the group.



And what music would that be? I don't hear any music behind what's on the radio today. And why do you think there are boring ass shows like "American Idol"? Those are shows focused on singing only. They don't focus on music whatsoever. Those are shows that are made for someone like you to like, not me.




And apparently, that's the reason for your rant, because it must offend you when I use the word Shitney. Well, that's me, and I'm a lot nicer than I used to be when I used to call her "Whiteny".

And as for the singers that you listed, with the exception of Vanity and Madonna, I don't care for any of them. And while you are talking about not caring about how uptempo they are, the majority of the ones you listed aren't uptempo.

Once again, you don't know a damn thing about me or what I stand for.

Thank you and you are exactly right. I told him the same shit before but apparently he must think I'm part of an even younger generation than I really am. Hell, I graduated high school in 1985. The majority of the music I grew up with was bands. It wasn't all these damn solo artists with all these "hot producers". Michael Jackson was probably one of the few with a "hot producer" when I was growing up. But yet, I'm supposed to be part of this producer driven generation.

Right again. I love some slow music but it has to be good slow music. I love the groups with the male falsetto like The Stylistics, Blue Magic, Norman Conners, The Delfonics, Earth, Wind, and Fire, The Average White Band, Special Delivery, Heatwave, Switch, Cameo, etc. but they have to have good music behind them also and these groups do.

I hate the slow music when it became adult contemporary sounding (that's what I hate the most), crossover sounding (hell I don't even like fast crossover music), or shit hop sounding (slow music should never be over a shit hop beat). Hell, I can remember before hip hop became shit hop. Hip hop was fast uptempo party music.

Exactly. Ask any kid today how the hell they can like these rap songs today and they will say...."listen to what they are saying"...hell, who the hell cares what they are saying? Our music wasn't lyric driven, it was ass driven. We didn't listen to music to hear a ghetto version of "As The World Turns".

We listened to music that made our ass move even if we didn't want it to. I can remember sitting on the couch with my boom box listening to music while my grandmother was making mustard greens in the kitchen. She used to complain that even though she didn't like my music, she couldn't concentrate on what she was doing because it would make her foot tap like it had a mind of it's own.

I always say that if they played O'bryan's "Im Freaky" at a high school dance these days,today's kids wouldn't even know how to dance to it They wouldn't be able to keep up with a fast,relentless groove like that.They're used to dancing to midtempo,smoothed out,shit hop garbage.

They don't dance period, at least the guys don't. All they do is stand around and make arm gestures like they are swatting flies and every once in a while they pull up those baggy ass jeans when they get too low.

As for the females, they are shaking ass and popping it as fast as they can. You would think they were popping it to something as fast as Donna Summer's "Our Love" but they are actually popping it to something as slow as Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life". The movement of their asses has far surpassed each beat they are shaking it to.