filmnoirdame said:

Yes praise the Lord, Hallelujah!

Shesoffthewall, I take it you are not a Debarge fan?

I still have yet to hear the very 1st Debarge album

filmnoirdame said:

I'm just playin' with you mostly. They're cool. "All This Love," "Time Will Reveal," "A Dream," and "I Like" are my cuts! Good R&B, feel good music.

A Dream is the one Debarge song I cannot stomach in any way, shape or form. It probably has to do with the fact that I never liked Bunny

Bunny has a very unfortunate voice-kinda like Michelle from Destiny's Child

filmnoirdame said:

I have to agree. I liked this song when it came out, but I despised the version Mary J. Blige did in the nineties. She added a choir to the end and oversung, it was a horrible mess. Mary J.'s version has ruined this song for me.

I think people should stop sampling and remaking the Debarge catalogue. They sung it the best. Leave it alone.

filmnoirdame said:

I feel the same way about Marvin Gaye's work.

filmnoirdame said:

I don't think Debarge is crying about that. I'm sure they need all the money they can get through sampling and royalties.

Why does everyone think the Debarges are broke?

BlaqueKnight said:

Yep,...I agree that El copped Bobby's style. I suspect that there are more on here that would favor El mainly cuz of age but Bobby was a cold songwriter and vocalist back in the late 70's, early 80's. Oh and before ya'll try to defend Bobby, u can undo the knots in your drawers, "cold" is slang for "great" and or "bangin". As far as the comparison to P's or El's vocals, I don't consider El anywhere in the same league as Prince . To me, El isn't the singer that Michael was. Someone who never even had to fuck with a falsetto in the first place. But El didn't have the vocal control that P has singing falsetto. That's where Prince trumps El. Sure, I think El's voice is naturally higher than P's so because of that, he can hit higher notes. So to some, especially girls, El sounds "prettier" and way more "girlish". But he doesn't have the range nor control that P has when P is singing in falsetto. Not even close. El couldn't begin to fuck with a track like Adore. To me, P's falsetto is more throatier, more like the old time gospel singers.

blackguitaristz said:

See, when you say it like that, I have to agree 100%.

Prince's falsetto is one of my favorites because of his ability to scream. And he doesn't scream like one of those heavy metal guys either. He's got one of those screams like a large black woman like Aretha Franklin or Martha Wash. Even when Prince is showing his hard rock side, that falsetto comes out as unmistakably "black" and that's what I love so much about it. Maybe that's why a lot of his pop/rock fans don't like for him to sing in it.

vainandy said:

They just hating. Because they know they can't do it like him. I remember when some glam rock dude try to sing falsetto over a rock track and he just sounded ridiculous. Prince actually could get away with it.

I crack up laughing every time I hear St. Paul scream in "Screams Of Passion".

Timmy84 said:

Well that's largely because of P's "understanding" of different genres. When u listen to a track like "Little Red Corvette", a straight up pop/rock song, P STILLS manages to go gospel on your ass vocally in the same song. P is straight clowning with it too. P vocally, was throwing down so many gospel riffs in Little Red Corvette, it's not even funny. With the gospel scream to boot. NOBODY was doing that and STILL isn't. In that regard, P was so ahead of everybody else. And then P was hip to cats like Marc Bolan of T-Rex. P would slide some of Bolan's vocalism's in the mix as well. P "understood" the sensibilites of different genres. So P always brought more to the table than his peers. But when it came to vocals, Prince ALWAYS kept it black. There was never no doubt that a brutha was singing.
[Edited 10/7/08 14:31pm]

blackguitaristz said:

And that's why I fucks with Prince. Guy did all those genres and yet he always kept it hood.

That's true. "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad" is hard rock and "Bambi" is damn near heavy metal. That falsetto is still unmistakably black as hell though and sounds great.

filmnoirdame said:

They themselves don't seem to mind. Both Bunny and El have voiced that. Rick James got a crazy amount of money from "Can't Touch This" alone.

See, I don't think there is anything gospely about P. He sounds more rock to me, so that is why he can rip on Little Red Corvette and scream like that. He doesn't sound like Martha Wash.

Are you sure that El's voice is higher than P's? I thought they were in the same range. Also, not sure that Bobby was that great of a songwriter. Singer, yeah. I love Switch, but their music sounds dated. Very late 70s. I still say El and Bobby sound just the same. Now Chico is the one that can't measure up to El or Bobby. El can measure up to Bobby.

filmnoirdame said:[quote]See, I don't think there is anything gospely about P. He sounds more rock to me, so that is why he can rip on Little Red Corvette and scream like that. He doesn't sound like Martha Wash. [quote]

Nobody said Prince sounded like Martha. At least I know I didn't. But if u don't hear P's gospel influence in his vocals then,....more power to ya. It's not THAT deep to me, player. I just don't think El is anywhere near the vocalist that Prince is. Just my own personal opinion. You'll have some folks who believe that Grover from Sesame Street has a better falsetto than El and prince put together. Me personally, I can careless who has the same range as who and who's singing from their chest or who's singing from their tippy toes and who's singing standing on their head. "Well you know, I thought El was singing from the shower with the water running in reverse when he cut his vocals!' "Nan nah, that was Bobby!" "Oh well shit,..Prince and Michael would sing crawled up in a trunk to do their vocals!" "Nah nah, that was Philip Bailey!".
[Edited 10/7/08 16:33pm]
[Edited 10/7/08 16:34pm]

filmnoirdame said:[quote]See, I don't think there is anything gospely about P. He sounds more rock to me, so that is why he can rip on Little Red Corvette and scream like that. He doesn't sound like Martha Wash.
(quote)
Oh and for the record, it's NOTHING "rock" about the way Prince screams on Little Red Corvette or any other song. "Rock" cats can't scream like Prince. That's ALL gospel influenced. Read Timmy's and vain's posts that coincide with mine and that illustrates the point I made. But again, it's all opinion's when the sun goes down and when the moon rises so.....

NMusiqNSoul said:

blackguitaristz said:[quote]filmnoirdame said:[quote]See, I don't think there is anything gospely about P. He sounds more rock to me, so that is why he can rip on Little Red Corvette and scream like that. He doesn't sound like Martha Wash.

too funny

filmnoirdame said:

It wouldn't have been that hard back then. You have to consider that this was BEFORE the advent of the information superhighway, the stalkerazzi, and the country's 24/7 obsession with the "cult of celebrity" as a distraction from real life issues.

Supressing any scandalous information about the Debarges would have been no different than say, the way the movie & music studios kept Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney on speed from the age of 12, the idea that Jackie Wilson was managed by mafia and tried to rape a teenaged Patti LaBelle, or that ShirleyTemple used to be disciplined by being locked in a crate if she didn't perform well...there was a time when we didn't know these types of stories, because there was no supply, demand, and most important, no distribution outlet for this kind of information. I remember that time very well. It's very clear to me that today's media climate is worlds away from what it was 25-30 years ago .We're so bombarded with useless information about people's private affairs there's no way a family could struggle today the way the Debarges did back then without constantly being in the spotlight. But things were different then, ya' know?

Yeah and also the mainstream media didn't really do a lot of reporting on Black stars then unless you were Prince or Michael. The media didn't really care about Debarge. But these days, thanks to Bossip, etc, El's babymamma drama would be called out.

Actually, after about 86 or so, dirt about Debarge started creeping out. But then again, that is when Debarge was over and had left Motown. They didn't have Motown to cover up their dirt.

scriptgirl said:

Exactly, lol.

Motown fucked up by forcing El to go solo. He just wasn't a solo star like that.