http://www.youtube.com/wa...U0zQ-gnDfg


and she used that same old chord progression we heard 4 years ago on "Where Is The Love"

here it is unblended:

No it's not very good at all.

one of my top 2 songs of the moment along with bruce springsteen's radio nowhere

I'm listening to her album leak on MTV and gay LOGO

I'm so disappointed with 'no one'. I mean, its aiight.

But I'm still going to buy her album anyway

She'd still get it.

Here's another one calle Like You'll Never See Me Again:

http://www.youtube.com/wa...HAMuefOZ5s

Is it sampling the end of Purple Rain?

Ellie said:

Yep. I heard it yesterday on the way home. Right after the song the deejay lit into her about making sure she gives Prince some songwriting credit. Then people started calling in the station with all sorts of Prince references.

"Alicia Keys new song sucks"

That can pretty much be said for the whole CD.
Although I give her props for bringing back an old school technique of starting out mid-tempo and speeding up the song in "Thing About Love", most of the CD is mediocre. Her arrangements are BORING. She should have taken the drum loop in the beginning of "I Need You" and used it on "Go Ahead" and discarded "I Need You" completely so she'd have at least one song with a tiny bit of bite to it. I think I'm starting to feel about Alicia the way Vainandy feels about Whitney Houston only without the hate. Alicia is possibly one of the unfunkiest artists in the R&B genre. She music seems sterile on CD. She needs to stop those rap producers from making her drum beats. It sounds like she has a rap producer lay down the drum track and she comes in and plays piano over it and someone else comes in and arranges around it. If that's what she's doing, that doesn't work for her. Her tracks are lame and lifeless. I tried. I honestly tried. I had higher hopes for Alicia but her music is not growing.

BlaqueKnight said:

Well i think you nailed the issue right there, PRODUCTION, that is where a majority of artists, talented, go wrong. Producers today are not producers, i know i have said this before but i cannot call the Neptunes or Tim or Danja producers when someone like Arif Mardin was a PRODUCER, its just not the same thing. Production is not about laying down the beat, Alicia should have a band laying down that beat, and she should have them in the studio with her, and trust me i know that the music on this album for the most part was laid around her vocals, because thats the way almost everyone works at this point, which im sorry that is not BEING PRODUCED.

BlaqueKnight said:

The rap producer you speak of is her partner Kerry Brothers. I haven't heard the album, but even from the clips, you just said exactly what I was thinking. The music is too hip hop influenced, and the drum patterns takes away from it. He actually started out as a local hip hop producer and started doing rnb through Alicia. I applaud you for listening to it and nailing my issue.

Also BlaqueKnight, you speak of the song I Need U, which I'm having huge issues with. You listen to the drums of it here in the studio:

http://inthestudio.alicia...n.html#0/3

And you hear the song, or a snippet of the song(in my case) and wonder what the heck happened to the drums. That would have been a bit funkyier for her right there, but they took the life out of it.
[Edited 11/7/07 9:32am]

dragondayz said:

Mainly because all HIP HOP Producers are not Real Producers, unless you have a band in the studio jamming away on a track you are not gonna get the Live Funk feel to a track. All these cats do is slap a beat over vocals, thats not Producing.

Thats what I thought of Diary Of Alecia Keys


UNTIL THE VIDEOS CAME OUT and then I started liking them. Each song's video seemed to bring out the spark. Or hearing it on the radio a couple of times. Especially Karma and Secrets.


I wont judge the album until I probably see the videos for the singles.

dragondayz said:

They did. That's why I hate the biz. Someone on the executive level who knows nothing about music decided that it was best to re-edit the song for the target market for "continuity" and proceeded to do the same for all of her songs. Her live versions are better but still, Alicia is just not cutting it. She's not growing but rather repeating what she's already done with less feeling.

dragondayz said:

all her songs should be live

lastdecember said:

She'd do well with some Timbaland or Danga production. At least she'd have a starting point to build around. She's needs people like that building her bottom so that she won't layer the same old shit. Another problem is building her songs around her vocals. She sings EVERYTHING like a ballad and her strongest song so far was Karma. She's needs some people around her that aren't telling her she's a genius all of the damn time who can offer some constructive criticism.

I think Alicia knows that she's no genius. I think she's just trying to live up to everyone's expectations.She said it was hard to find inspiration to make this record, so she should have took more time off, instead of forcing a sound, but I'm sure she have deadlines.

They keep switching it up from album to album so you really can't compare it to the last, but she is loosing it in the mix.

TDOAK was more production driven then SIAM because you can just tell they wanted more singles, which resulted in the whole album sounding like each song was intended to be a single, but the majority of the songs fell short.

I believe they are using the same formula with this album, but with different influences.

BlaqueKnight said:

I disagree with Tim and Danja all they will do is take her further into a realm of artists like Britney and Justin and Nelly and Alicia to me is alreayd past those people, she needs someone organic to work with, someone stressing diversity, and rawness, not burying her in beats. I respect Tim and Danja but they are only good in the way Stock Aiken and Wterman were in the 80's, they were good for artists like Bananarama and Samantha Fox and Rick Astley, but they would have sucked with George Michael or Prince, and thats the way i view Tim and Danja, they are good for Britney or Rihanna etc, but not good wiht musicians, case in point, the garbage tracks that Timbaland did with Duran Duran on their new album, total garbage, tim totally sucked the life and energy out of the band on his tracks and made them sound lifeless. And really thats all he would do for Alicia, he would just make her more radio-accessible, which is the last thing she needs.

you all do know that timbaland produced this right?

http://www.youtube.com/wa...xMU4mt4TO8

dragondayz said:

Oh yeah..it was aiight...

dragondayz said:

I enjoy it live when she has a band behind her, but on record it suffers, had she recorded it with a live band it would have been a million times better.

Umm yeah she really sucks to me right now too. I'm usually up for Alicia's albums but this I'm not even sure I will be buying it at all. I'm just not impressed. "No One" bores the shit out of me. Her first album was so damn good, the second was a good effort but wasn't as good as the first & now this one, I have a feeling, will be utter shit.

BlaqueKnight said:

But still there is a difference than having a bands live stuff laid over your vocals. Unless that band is in there with them/her jamming on a track its not going to be what it can be, u are going to hear the dis-connection from artist to band.Almost no one does it this any more but that right there is a major issue. Take someone like Prince who NEVER has another human in the studio with him, mainly because he plays everything, but then pieces things together, its a little different because he is one person with one idea, regardless of what his liner notes say, i dont think Prince ever lets anyone play on his records.

From Alicia a track like Heartburn was cool, but could have been 100times better if she had a band with her in the studio with her playing, not tim sampling someones drum beats, which were used on countless other records. I understand your point but until there is that connection between the live musician and the singer in the studio together, than you will always get the same result because there are no Producers anymore that piece together work properly, like say Arif Mardin used to do.
[Edited 11/7/07 11:16am]

Still can't get over how bad her voice sounds on that song. As for the production I agree with blaqueknight, but the absense of musicians in music has been a problem for at least two decades. I remember hearing Cyndi Lauper's live version of "What's Going On" from 1987 and thinking how great it sounded. Then when I heard the official studio version I couldn't believe how cold and empty it sounded by comparison. No-one in their right mind could have thought the studio version was actually better, but they were trend-chasing. Shit synthesisers were the order of the day so everyone ignored the evidence of their own ears and effectively sabotaged their own music to satisfy the dictates of radio programmers. That's why fashion is dangerous. It stops people from thinking for themselves. The mentality is "my ears/eyes may be telling me this is a mistake, but if everyone else is making the same mistake then at least I won't be alone." You see it in clothing and hairstyles (mullets anyone?), and you hear it in music. Fashion is often just foolishness on a mass scale.

midnightmover said:

The funny thing is most of the bands that were using the synths early on, could play, and went back to playing live and when they did people thought "whats this?" . Which is why i cant call someone like timbaland a producer, because he's not producing anything, hes layering shit to a point it wouldnt matter who was on the track, and thats not Producing. So there may be an art to what Tim and pharrell do, its just not producing. You cant lump Timbaland in as a Producer with likes of Arif Mardin,Phil Ramone,George Martin. Arif produced the likes of Chaka,Hall and Oates,Norah Jones,Bee Gees and tons more, and none of them sounded the same.

lastdecember said:

It was so bad in the 80s that I think a lot of artists would have to re-record their 80s catalogue in order to redeem their legacies. I heard Gloria Estefan the other day doing a live version of "Words Get In The Way", a truly great song, but if you listen to the original studio version it's hard to get past the lame synths. There are a lot of great songs from that time that are ruined by the collective insanity of the time. It's funny cos Prince spoke about it in 1985, saying that "producers have ruined music" by focusing on sounds over music. If you actually read his full comments they could just as easily apply to the situation today.

midnightmover said:

Yeah i agree, alot of the records were produced poorly back then, and the thing is the so-called prodcuers of today are trying to be like that, and the thing is they are, but at least the 80's music was different from artist to artist, you dont have that today. Alot of the 70's artists hit the 80's and really did some bad work, but the thing is, it wasnt so much the material, it was the production. Look at the Stones,Elton,Queen.McCartney, some of their 80's stuff is dreadful, but it was the way the music was produced and the things being used, because alot of the songs were good.