What a healthy discussion....indeed

What plagues modern R&B (IMO) is that this current generation did not have a great foundation from which to base their skills from.

For the sake of continuity, lets look at Prince & MJ. Both artists were children when James Brown (along with Stevie, Marvin Gaye),was the giant in the rythym & blues scene. They saw how the genre could be pushed in fascinating new directions by challenging themselves to become better with sound & technique.

Much like their JB (and others like Hendrix)predecessors, they refused to let the genre define them. Instead, they added a wrinkle to the game and became the last of the true pioneers in their field. Thriller & Purple Rain are two landmarks in black music (and music in general)that are a testament to creating something different.

Artists now are just content on being seen by the masses. They don't strike me as being students of their craft. Even the "neo-soul" movement was a half hearted attempt at pushing R&B in new directions since the artists that helped define it (Badu, Maxwell, D'Angelo) had sporadic follow ups to excellent debut albums. With that being said, their debuts (Baduizm, UHS, Brown Sugar) are the last great R&B albums, but once again, they thought outside the box and studied how to bring something different to the table.

yeah...and then Prince released Musicology and every magazine put him on the cover. Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly....all had him on the cover because Prince was back (not that he went anywhere). But Vibe being the hippocrits they are didn't even put him on the cover. I am off topic again my bad

It's about TIIIIIME somebody in that asskissing world said something TRUE

& great post, Blaque



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[Edited 1/11/09 21:29pm]

lastdecember said:

in 1998, Prince was both irrelevant and not that great, so they kind of had a point.

errant said:

well...point proven... What was he doin in 98? NPS?

I agree with the article but why was it not written 15 years ago? Music didn't suddenly get the way it is today and "Vibe" magazine helped it to get this way by giving the shit hoppers exposure in it's magazine all these years.

COMPUTERBLUE1984 said:

I call B.S. Sorry. You absolutely CAN NOT blame the artists or reduce their work to footnotes. Maxwell's follow-up, D'Angelo's follow-up and Erykah's follow-up to their debut CDs were all good records and as artists, its expected that they do something different than their first efforts. They may not be to your personal taste but that doesn't make them bad records. Purple Rain and Thriller aren't R&B records. They are pop records. They also came at a very different time in music history. In 94-95-96, rap was becoming a dominant force in music and the label heads had come to realize how much money they could make following the business model of "buy low/sell high."
I also disagree that Baduizm, UHS and Brown Sugar are the last great R&B albums.
They may be the last greatly PROMOTED R&B albums but certainly not the last great ones.
Why is it that people default to blaming the artists when the artists are in the most difficult position? People see the artists but the labels make all of the constraints that make it hard for artists to create and be released. They push singles that are slow, thus limiting their airplay time. They set up badly thought out tours while reserving the good tour spots for their pop artists who will make them the most money. Then, knowing that they deliberately f*cked the tours up, they bitch at the artists and threaten to drop them because of low tour sales. They skimp on promotion of R&B artists and then complain and blame the artist for low sales.
There is a strong effort in the music business to make R&B synonymous with SLOW MUSIC. I have been telling people this for YEARS and now its practically true. They sign artists to do a stereotype of what they want. If you're not doing it; you're not getting signed. So, before people blame the artists, try to understand what they have to deal with. Prince and Michael NEVER had the obstacles that today's R&B newcomers have to face. If they did, we wouldn't even have a Prince and Michael. You can't look at today's music business with 80s eyes. Its just not the same.

SoulAlive said:

Amen to that! Sad to say but true.

BlaqueKnight said:

But there again, as an artist, you have to put yourself in a place where you dont care if you sell or not, alot of the TOP performers dont care and phone it in at this point. If mariah is doing a new record she isnt busting it and trying to challenge or step outside the box, she saying "whats hot now" get them on my record, and this kind of thinking is why so many are just treading water at this point.

Now true that the obstacles are different, but you as an artist have to decide what its going to be. Elton John said recently "none of us back in the early 70's would have lasted in todays THINKING" and he's right, BUT he also sculpted his own path as did others like Stevie Wonder and David Bowie, or any band in the later 70's and early 80's who didnt take off till their 4-5 album. The thing is that ANY artist can break the mold, its up to them to do it or want to do it, or have the guts to do it, which means, not to sell. Now if its all about the $$ than dont bitch about the music sounding like everyone else, you gave in to it. And if the label drops you, GO GRASS ROOTS and work it on your own, i mean, in this day and age its a no brainer that only about a dozen of artists on labels are getting paid, the rest are just working on the plantation despite the money they bring in.