totaldiva said:

This is a little misleading. While the figures do show that white kids buy more rap music; this is due to the fact that most black kids do not really have the $11 to $15 bucks for these albums and as an alternative, go out and purchase the $5 "bootleg", versions of these albums. In my day, instead of buying Rakim or Kurtis Blow, my brothers and I would stick a cassette tape in the tape player and tune into Mr. Magic's rap show here in N.Y. and hit record. As for the Patti issue, I do think it is a matter of timing and it is a matter of taste. There are some, who do prefer the softer sound of Celine and Dolly over the full-bodied tone of a Whitney or Patti. For me, I prefer, Dolly's version over Whitney's because, Dolly's sounds more sincere. For me, in Dolly's version, you can sense that she really does not want to let him go. She is slow in her interpretation and it sound like she is really thinking about what she is going to say, before she says it. Whitney's just sounds like she's just singing, in a sense, yelling.That's just my opinion.

If I get a dollar for everytime a Whitney bash starts in this board

I prefer Dolly's version too. And don't get me started on the Chaka Khan cover

White people really like to live in denial. If Madonna were black, with her minimum talent no matter how hard working or ambitious she was there is no way she would have made it this big or stayed around this long.

The black artists that have gone on to be really big, have truely got phenomenal talent, be it Stevie Wonder, Aretha, Prince etc, but you know what I still believe if they were white they would have been bigger, still.

Someone once said he wanted a "white man who could sing and dance black" and we got Elvis!! That has always been the way of the music industry.
[Edited 12/3/07 10:25am]

whatsgoingon said:

I see your point but taken at face value it not such a bad thing that superstars have to have phenomenal talent, is it?
[Edited 11/29/07 12:45pm]

Empress said:

It is the race card man. Look at Hound Dog, to I Didnt Mean To Turn You On. Shot up the charts soon as a non-black artist recorded it.

Dreamgirls had a segment in their film with this same thing happening with their hit r&b single.

theAudience said:

Glad you mentioned Teena's screeching. I've got nothing against her, but she always sounded like a parody of a soul singer to me. People gave her a pass because her heart was in the right place, but judged purely as a vocalist, she was never the real deal. But no-one screches more than Patti though. Some of her performances have been nothing short of hideous.

NDRU said:

No, there is nothing wrong with superstars having phenomenal talent, infact to be a superstar they should have phenomenal talent to be class as such. But in the case of many, white, artists they can get away with having hardly any talent at all and become superstars, i.e. Madonna.
[Edited 11/29/07 13:58pm]

whatsgoingon said:

Isn't Janet pretty much the same thing as Madonna, but Madonna knows how to shock a bit better?

Wow, racism. Whitney bashing, and Madonna hatin all in the same thread, its like a prince.org trifecta is in play.

Patti may be right, but it's also pretty clear that the general public simply has bad taste.

Being a respected, successful singer that's a [i]little[i] more underground like her or Chaka and not a mainstream superstar like Whitney, Madonna, Celine, Usher, or Justin would probably be preferable to me.

whatsgoingon said:

This has Janet Jackson written all over it... I'll grant you that Janet never got as big as Madonna, but pretty damn close.
Elvis was good on his own merits...and Emeninem is one of the best rappers of all time. So what are we saying here?

I agree with a lot of what you post, but I ain't buying that race has anything to do with record sales...I never bought records because of who was singing the song, only because I liked the song. Shit, I'm on a website devoted to a black man!

2 words.....
Pat Boone

Graycap23 said:

But his versions of those songs have been completely forgotten in favor of the original versions.

but yes it was a blatantly racist move to do it back then
[Edited 11/29/07 15:25pm]

De-nial is definately not a river in Egypt.

totaldiva said:

HAAAAA!

Love it, looooove it

NDRU said:

and dont forget madonna can get away with shocking better, why..because she's white.

lowkey said:

I don't know. There was a huge backlash during the Erotica era. It was with Evita and Ray of Light that Madonna came back. Janet still has time to recover. She made a mistake with 20 YO. But she can still come back.

Rodya24 said:

what was madonna's 'backlash', some bad press, the catholic church got pissed,they said bad things about her in the media?

lowkey said:

I don't know since I was not even aware of her existence in 1993. But I read that her record sales dropped and a number of people wrote her off as a has-been who went overboard with the sexual image in desperation.

Rodya24 said:

But that didnt stop Secret and Take A Bow from going high up the charts and "I'll Remember" was played alot.

Madonna been buttneaked on the side of the road with oncoming traffic with Vanilla Ice (das my girl) and Janet accidentally shows a breast and she's written off



[Edited 11/29/07 17:33pm]

paisleypark4 said:

I wouldn't call it accidentally...

But it sure as stone hell was terminal.

Shit, they should be glad it wasn't Aretha

Harlepolis said:

No the way she tucked that breast in after the lights wasnt off wasnt staged
I bet she said ,"SHIT!! FUCK!!! What the hell did u do!!?"


if Madonna did that it would have been a headline that said, Madonna shocks the world again" and her next album and singles would have been #1

paisleypark4 said:

I am sure the reaction would have had none of the racism. But I have a feeling a number of people would still have called her a desperate old hag in continual need of attention.

paisleypark4 said:

Moreover, the white media excused the fact that Justin Timberlake (a white male) ripped off the part on Janet Jackson's costume that accidentally exposed her breast for, what, a fraction of a second at most? Most of the TV stations nationally didn't even show Jackson's revealed breast because the cameras flashed away so quickly.

But to hear white media and some white people spin and revise the story, Jackson was on the stage all by herself, ripped off the costume and said, "Look, Ma! Send money for college!" Not to mention that happened nearly four years ago and some people go on about it like it happened two hours ago.

If anything, THAT'S a racial double standard among music acts.
[Edited 11/29/07 18:15pm]

vainandy said:

oh LORD

totaldiva said:

There is a racial double standard in the music industry, but a lot of it is the byproduct of demographics in U.S. music. The vast majority of the country is white so naturally they are going to be the standard bearers of large-scale music.

Black artists mostly have to conform their style or appearance to garner such wide acceptance by that group. Look at Prince; he didn't experience crossover appeal until the single "Little Red Corvette," a much more rock-oriented song than most of his other previous works. To a largely white audience, Prince didn't exist in their eyes before that song.
[Edited 11/29/07 18:12pm]

paisleypark4 said:

That's the point though. Madonna, with the Bedtime Stories album, and leading up to it (right after the Letterman fiasco), pretty much went into atonement mode, did the least offensive and pandering album of her career (until 2005), and put out some songs with massive hit-potential.

Janet hasn't done that. She still can, but she hasn't yet.

lowkey said:

I just never felt shock was Janet's thing.

NDRU said:

Until the Superbowl.

I like Patti's version better... & I like Patti & Teena & sometimes Celine's ass too. But her version of Tina's "River Deep, Mountain High" is a joke - all the vocal power but zero soul