R&B, especially old school, hip hop not my thing, gets on my nerve.

Old skool R&B, not the pathetic crap that passes for it nowadays.

Even though hiphop's sound is cooler, funkier and more epic than R&B........R&B's message is more often than not way better than hiphop.

Hiphop has a nasty side that R&B has never had, which makes R&B the superior genre.

R&B. You can always find good R&B. Hip-hop, as much as I've loved it over the last 30+ years, doesn't always age as well. Quality R&B is timeless.

uPtoWnNY said:

Old skool R&B, not the pathetic crap that passes for it nowadays.

You always have the best responses.

uPtoWnNY said:

Old skool R&B, not the pathetic crap that passes for it nowadays.

There's some good R&B out there tho!

LouieLestate said:

Even though hiphop's sound is cooler, funkier and more epic than R&B........R&B's message is more often than not way better than hiphop.

Hiphop has a nasty side that R&B has never had, which makes R&B the superior genre.

That's your opinion, mine is that R&B is cooler, funkier, and more epic.

Empress said:

uPtoWnNY said:

Old skool R&B, not the pathetic crap that passes for it nowadays.

You always have the best responses.

Late 60s thru the late 90s is good enough for me.

LouieLestate said:

Hiphop has a nasty side that R&B has never had

I guess you've never heard Lucille Bogan, Millie Jackson, or Blowfly.

alphastreet said:

Yeah, didn’t Millie Jackson pose on a toilet on one of her album covers?

Yep. Early R&B was no cleaner than later. Just in the 1940s & 1950s the songs had double entendre lyrics (Big 10 Inch Record, What's That Smell Like Fish?, Hot Dog For My Roll, Please Warm My Weiner, It's Tight Like That, Hot Nuts From The Peanut Man, I'll Keep Sittin' On It If I Can't Sell It, Sweet Little Angel, etc.). Lucille Bogan didn't even do that. There were songs about drugs too in the 1920s. People who think sex, drugs, and violence in music came around with hip hop must have only listened to instrumental music.

alphastreet said:

Never heard of those but they sound so transparent

Aerosmith remade Big 10 Inch Record in the 1970s, but the original was by Bull Moose Jackson and came out in the early 1950s. You could even say there was an equivalent of music with the N-word. Both black & white artists recorded "coon songs". They were really popular during the early 1900s. There was the teen tragedy songs of the 1950s & 1960s.

MickyDolenz said:

alphastreet said:

Yeah, didn’t Millie Jackson pose on a toilet on one of her album covers?

Yep. Early R&B was no cleaner than later. Just in the 1940s & 1950s the songs had double entendre lyrics (Big 10 Inch Record, What's That Smell Like Fish?, Hot Dog For My Roll, Please Warm My Weiner, It's Tight Like That, Hot Nuts From The Peanut Man, I'll Keep Sittin' On It If I Can't Sell It, Sweet Little Angel, etc.). Lucille Bogan didn't even do that. There were songs about drugs too in the 1920s. People who think sex, drugs, and violence in music came around with hip hop must have only listened to instrumental music.

I value your posts Micky, always dropping knowledge on us uninformed.

Ella Fitzgerald, Chick Webb, Cab Calloway, Sidney Bechet and Benny Goodman all had songs about the devil's weed so Snoop wasn't an blazing trails in that regard.

Early 80's R&B and then 90's R&B. Those songs have substance and meaning and depth. Hip Hop? Only illiterate, rhyming, mumbled couplets. Booooooring (in MY opinion.) Happy New Year. <3

I miss actual playing in RB music, where did that go? It seems like every focus on rb and hip hop there is not one person that can play live. I think the 90's were very destructive to live rb sounds, because you had groups like Next and Shai etc... you had no focus on playing, though when asked everyone says Mint Condition, but if that is all RB has had live in the last two decades plus that's a problem.

lastdecember said:

I miss actual playing in RB music, where did that go? It seems like every focus on rb and hip hop there is not one person that can play live. I think the 90's were very destructive to live rb sounds, because you had groups like Next and Shai etc... you had no focus on playing, though when asked everyone says Mint Condition, but if that is all RB has had live in the last two decades plus that's a problem.

That began in the 1980s. Technology like synths, drum machines, & samplers made the traditional R&B band obsolete. These were cheaper than buying guitars or regular drums and didn't take up as much space. People could make songs in their house and didn't need to pay for studio time. Some schools started to cut music classes as well. Many of the older R&B singers came from singing in church, that was less so with later singers. So that might be a factor too. The old bands downsized and got rid of the horn sections because it was too expensive to pay a large group. Labels stopped signing those kinds of acts because their sound went out of style. A lot of the very early hip hop had traditional session musicians playing on the songs. Electrofunk was the beginning of the end, then New Jack Swing in the late 1980s killed what was left of the old style. New Jack was R&B singing mixed with a more hip hop sound so it had more appeal to the younger audience. Many of the NJS singers/groups like Bobby Brown & Al B. Sure! had a more street image and look than the old Temptations/Peabo Bryson matching suit & tie look or the outer space outfits of the funk bands. In the 1980s some R&B bands started to have a more androgynous look that the younger hip hop audience did not identify with. Look at the difference of how a early rap act like Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5 dressed and how the average rap act dressed post-Run DMC. Run-DMC were dressed like the audience that came to see them, didn't have expensive flashy outfits and didn't have eyeliner. Notice those jokes about Dr. Dre in his World Class Wreckin' Cru days. Run-DMC might have been the start of sneaker culture with My Adidias.

Many of the the veteran R&B bands and singers in the USA started making New Jack Swing records just like they released disco in the late 1970s. It was British groups in the 1990s that continued to do traditional R&B, but it was called "acid jazz" and it didn't really hit in the US except maybe Brand New Heavies & Jamiroquai who had minor success in the states. They had some hip hop vibe though and so did Tony! Toni! Toné!, probably the last band that got a lot of airplay on R&B radio. Everything else was singers & vocal groups and a lot of it had samples. Jam & Lewis often used samples on their productions. Interstingly it was some 1990s hip hop that still used traditonal instruments (DJ Quik, Organized Noize/OutKast, Dr. Dre, The Roots) when popular R&B mostly abandoned them. This was the end of the old school Quincy Jones type producer and the rise of beatmaker producers like Timbaland. If you look at later Soul Train episodes, most of it was rap and there were fewer singers. That was when Don Cornelius stopped hosting and there were hosts that had hip hop appeal like Shemar Moore.

MickyDolenz said:

lastdecember said:

I miss actual playing in RB music, where did that go? It seems like every focus on rb and hip hop there is not one person that can play live. I think the 90's were very destructive to live rb sounds, because you had groups like Next and Shai etc... you had no focus on playing, though when asked everyone says Mint Condition, but if that is all RB has had live in the last two decades plus that's a problem.

That began in the 1980s. Technology like synths, drum machines, & samplers made the traditional R&B band obsolete. These were cheaper than buying guitars or regular drums and didn't take up as much space. People could make songs in their house and didn't need to pay for studio time. Some schools started to cut music classes as well. Many of the older R&B singers came from singing in church, that was less so with later singers. So that might be a factor too. The old bands downsized and got rid of the horn sections because it was too expensive to pay a large group. Labels stopped signing those kinds of acts because their sound went out of style. A lot of the very early hip hop had traditional session musicians playing on the songs. Electrofunk was the beginning of the end, then New Jack Swing in the late 1980s killed what was left of the old style. New Jack was R&B singing mixed with a more hip hop sound so it had more appeal to the younger audience. Many of the NJS singers/groups like Bobby Brown & Al B. Sure! had a more street image and look than the old Temptations/Peabo Bryson matching suit & tie look or the outer space outfits of the funk bands. In the 1980s some R&B bands started to have a more androgynous look that the younger hip hop audience did not identify with. Look at the difference of how a early rap act like Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5 dressed and how the average rap act dressed post-Run DMC. Run-DMC were dressed like the audience that came to see them, didn't have expensive flashy outfits and didn't have eyeliner. Notice those jokes about Dr. Dre in his World Class Wreckin' Cru days. Run-DMC might have been the start of sneaker culture with My Adidias.

Many of the the veteran R&B bands and singers in the USA started making New Jack Swing records just like they released disco in the late 1970s. It was British groups in the 1990s that continued to do traditional R&B, but it was called "acid jazz" and it didn't really hit in the US except maybe Brand New Heavies & Jamiroquai who had minor success in the states. They had some hip hop vibe though and so did Tony! Toni! Toné!, probably the last band that got a lot of airplay on R&B radio. Everything else was singers & vocal groups and a lot of it had samples. Jam & Lewis often used samples on their productions. Interstingly it was some 1990s hip hop that still used traditonal instruments (DJ Quik, Organized Noize/OutKast, Dr. Dre, The Roots) when popular R&B mostly abandoned them. This was the end of the old school Quincy Jones type producer and the rise of beatmaker producers like Timbaland. If you look at later Soul Train episodes, most of it was rap and there were fewer singers. That was when Don Cornelius stopped hosting and there were hosts that had hip hop appeal like Shemar Moore.

True but the live element was still there in chart topping artists like Kool and the Gang Rick James Lionel and others, the 90's these artists were over, Nike Rodgers was producing and of course Prince was always playing it wasn't till the 90's that Prince started taking live out of his sound with things like Emancipation which was very programmed.

lastdecember said:

True but the live element was still there in chart topping artists like Kool and the Gang Rick James Lionel and others, the 90's these artists were over, Nike Rodgers was producing and of course Prince was always playing it wasn't till the 90's that Prince started taking live out of his sound with things like Emancipation which was very programmed.

That was the early 1980s. There's a difference in 1979 Cameo and Word Up Cameo. Kool & The Gang & Rick James did New Jack Swing and so did Midnight Star, Bar-Kays, James Ingram, James Brown, Daryl Hall, The Jacksons/Michael/Jermaine/Janet/Randy, Aretha Franklin, Boy George, Sheena Easton, Gap Band, Morris Day, Billy Ocean, etc. Gospel acts were doing New Jack too like The Winans. Bill Withers released a NJS remix of Lovely Day and the Commodores did a Brick House one. Even The Rolling Stones had Teddy Riley remix one of their singles. There was also the case of rap breaks taking over a guitar or sax solo in R&B. Like what the Force MDs and New Edition was doing in the early 1980s and Melle Mel with Chaka Khan & Rakim with Jody Watley. Milli Vanilli was rap mixed with singing, no matter who was on the record and that album was multi-platinum. There were pop acts doing rap or using hip hop sounds too (Rapture, Wham! Rap, Queen Of The Rapping Scene, Wordy Rappinghood, Falco, Duran Duran remaking 911 Is A Joke & White Lines, etc).

That's like choosing between only re-runs of Friends or Full House for the rest of one's days, but I'll go with R&B because it's less consistently awful.

R & B, before the 90s.

Tontoman22 said:

R&B. I just prefer songs and lyrics I can feel and relate to. It helps me make sense out of situations in my life. The topics in a lot of hip-hop songs just weren't subjects I could indentify with. I can't listen to any hip-hop song and say, "That happened to me!" I never lived those kinds of lyrics. For me, music has always been my therapy. I primarily use it for understanding and healing. I enjoy some hip-hop songs from the 80's for entertainment purposes. I don't feel any of it, though. It doesn't possess any healing properties for me.

Early R&B

spacedolphin said:

That's like choosing between only re-runs of Friends or Full House for the rest of one's days

I used to watch Full House, but haven't seen the new version because I only have regular TV. I've never seen Friends other than 1 episode and that was only because Jean-Claude Van Damme was in it. It didn't make me interested in the show itself.

MickyDolenz said:

spacedolphin said:

That's like choosing between only re-runs of Friends or Full House for the rest of one's days

I used to watch Full House, but haven't seen the new version because I only have regular TV. I've never seen Friends other than 1 episode and that was only because Jean-Claude Van Damme was in it. It didn't make me interested in the show itself.

I definitely agree that JCVD was the best part of that episode and probably the best actor across the entire 10 seasons (admittedly I only watched 8 or so episodes). Tom Selleck was a good guest star too but when he's not onscreen, you become aware you're watching Friends. If we're being serious I'd choose Full House, because like R&B while it can be shallow and sickeningly saccharine, as you rightly pointed out the good writers tackle topical issues, build a dialogue with the audience and create empathy with the story. Friends is like hip-hop in that it is phoney, insincere, narcissistic, rife with literacy and numeracy problems, and is at times sadistic and misogynous, but gets a free pass because it was seen as "subversive" even though it is firmly about ascribing fans to a systemised way of thinking. On a scale of Nas to Soulja Boy, Friends is Kevin Federline.