Empress said:

funkman88 said:

he was too thuggish lookin....

Just wow

lets just say the cast from Friends aint tryin 2 hear the naked dude on the front of untitled video....come on now....lets be real

funkman88 said:

he was too thuggish lookin....

Yet a group called Bone Thugs-N-Harmony had Top 40 pop airplay and their albums were popular with the mainstream. There was also Yo! MTV Raps that showed music videos by gangsta rap acts like Geto Boys & NWA. The movies Boyz N The Hood & New Jack City were mainstream box office hits. Jodeci had a few pop Top 20 hits and they were more street looking than D'Angelo. So your comment makes no sense.

MickyDolenz said:

funkman88 said:

he was too thuggish lookin....

Yet a group called Bone Thugs-N-Harmony had Top 40 pop airplay and their albums were popular with the mainstream. There was also Yo! MTV Raps that showed music videos by gangsta rap acts like Geto Boys & NWA. The movies Boyz N The Hood & New Jack City were mainstream box office hits. Jodeci had a few pop Top 20 hits and they were more street looking than D'Angelo. So your comment makes no sense.

at your rebuttals but in this case, I thought the same thing in my mind. Even Sisqo had a hit the same year with no shirt, dyed hair, LOL

Cinny said:

at your rebuttals but in this case, I thought the same thing in my mind. Even Sisqo had a hit the same year with no shirt, dyed hair, LOL

Red Hot Chili Peppers' never heard of a shirt. They've also been known to only wear a sock onstage or nothing at all in Flea's case.

MickyDolenz said:

whodknee said:

MickyDolenz said:

crossover means how many other race at your show,,,,f=go 2 next bone thugs concert and tell me how many non blacks there will ya.....

funkman88 said:

crossover means how many other race at your show,,,,f=go 2 next bone thugs concert and tell me how many non blacks there will ya.....

An act cannot have a #1 song on the Hot 100 in the USA with only the Black audience. It would just be an R&B hit. Here's some hip hop acts performing in Europe and the audiences are mostly white:

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
Wu Tang Clan
Digable Planets
Jay-Z
Sugarhill Gang
Cardi B, Travis Scott, Migos, & others

spacedolphin said:

The market was very competitive when he released that first album, he got outmuscled in the slow-ass boomer music stakes by the bigger names dropping more high-profile songs at the time. But he can always be content in the fact that he pioneered neo-soul alongside Soul 4 Real.

You're not referring to Candy Rain Soul 4 Real are you?

MickyDolenz said:

funkman88 said:

crossover means how many other race at your show,,,,f=go 2 next bone thugs concert and tell me how many non blacks there will ya.....

An act cannot have a #1 song on the Hot 100 in the USA with only the Black audience. It would just be an R&B hit. Here's some hip hop acts performing in Europe and the audiences are mostly white:

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
Wu Tang Clan
Digable Planets
Jay-Z
Sugarhill Gang
Cardi B, Travis Scott, Migos, & others

everyone knows when they say crossover they talkin about USA!!EUROPE LIKE ANYTHING....they not as versed about good music like the States....

[Edited 8/5/21 7:32am]

funkman88 said:

everyone knows when they say crossover they talkin about USA!!

Billboard Magazine is the USA. If rap did not crossover in the USA, how did The Fresh Prince, Ice Cube, Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Ice T, Snoop Dogg, etc. become popular movie/TV stars? How did Dr. Dre come close to being a billionaire from Beats headphones? The Roots are the house band on the Tonight Show. Can't get anymore mainstream than Jimmy Fallon or Snoop Dogg on a cooking show with Martha Stewart. Hip hop is also often used in movie trailers, no matter what the movie is about. Straight Outta Comption is the 2nd highest grossing biopic behing Queen's movie. A lot of hip hop slang became mainstream words that even went in the dictionary. And I'm not talking about the Urban Dictionary either.

MickyDolenz said:

Man, I remember that summer like it was yesterday I still love most of those songs.

Cinny said:

Man, I remember that summer like it was yesterday I still love most of those songs.

I forgot about those Jeff Foxworthy comedy albums being so popular. That really shows that country music really blew up in the 1990s. Way more than grunge did, but Nirvana gets the press, not Garth Brooks.

MickyDolenz said:

Cinny said:

Man, I remember that summer like it was yesterday I still love most of those songs.

I forgot about those Jeff Foxworthy comedy albums being so popular. That really shows that country music really blew up in the 1990s. Way more than grunge did, but Nirvana gets the press, not Garth Brooks.

Country blew the FUCK up, and I realized this year I still know those songs whether I liked them or not!

Cinny said:

Country blew the FUCK up, and I realized this year I still know those songs whether I liked them or not!

Without country hitting blockbuster status during that time, there would have been no Hannah Montana (and probably not the huge success of Old Town Road either)

kitbradley said:

It was abundantly clear, for me anyway, that D'Angelo was a black man making music for and about black folk! There appeared to be no intention for him to be a pop crossover artist. And there is nothing wrong with that. I still listen to his first two albums and the live CD. He would not have held my interest at all if those albums were littered with guest rappers or elecro pop/dance material.

So you don´t like Black Messiah at all?

And when you say live album, are you referring to the Jazzcafé London gig? I have that CD and it rarely gets mentioned by anybody. Probably because it was only released in Japan? Or do you have a Canadian version?

MattyJam said:

He hardly makes commercial music. There's not really anything in his catalogue that would have mass mainstream appeal.

Yes, this and the slow pace of releases. His first album was creatively solid but it still had a certain "maintream" r&b appeal to my ears, so it could have gone either way I think. I remember hearing his cover of Cruisin' pretty frequently. Voodoo felt much more daring and left-field though, almost a Dirty Mind moment. Aside from Sly Stone and Prince, the other major influence on Voodoo was the obscure but brilliant British artist Lewis Taylor (whose debut album was also amazing but widely ignored), so he clearly wasn't aiming for mainstream appeal.

[Edited 8/8/21 18:21pm]

funkman88 said:

Empress said:

Just wow

lets just say the cast from Friends aint tryin 2 hear the naked dude on the front of untitled video....come on now....lets be real

My teenage sister certainly was. D'Angelo is beautiful I'd say.

edit: I've always thought that he looked quite gentle and vulnerable in that video... the opposite of "thuggish".

[Edited 8/8/21 18:33pm]

Prince said he needs to figure out who he is (outside of Prince)

KoolEaze said:

MOst of his music was not commercial except for a few songs. It is not like he ruled the R&B and Urban charts other than for his one massive hit "Untilted (How Does It Feel?) and a few other hits. So, it was not just his embacing his Blackness but also his artistry was not always as polished and melodic as most radio songs of any stripe.

kitbradley said:

KoolEaze said:

So you don´t like Black Messiah at all?

And when you say live album, are you referring to the Jazzcafé London gig? I have that CD and it rarely gets mentioned by anybody. Probably because it was only released in Japan? Or do you have a Canadian version?

No, didn't dig "Black Messiah" at all. And yes, I am referring to the Jazz Cafe Live CD, which was later expanded to include the complete show and reissued on CD in the U.S.

Wow, I wasn´t aware of that. Thanks for the info.

I NEED that album now. I have the Japanese version and always wondered why the show was so short.

KoolEaze said:

kitbradley said:

KoolEaze said: No, didn't dig "Black Messiah" at all. And yes, I am referring to the Jazz Cafe Live CD, which was later expanded to include the complete show and reissued on CD in the U.S.

Wow, I wasn´t aware of that. Thanks for the info.

I NEED that album now. I have the Japanese version and always wondered why the show was so short.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x4kMoUKglc&list=PLfRDZBNbHr5TuxW_FPhtA3rY-ltiGlF71

Over here in "unversed in good music" land, I remember Untitled (how does it feel) being played every 20 seconds on MTV. It was his only song to do that, but it sure as hell happened. Being that Black Messiah didn't exactly blow up in the USA either I don't know what to tell you. Personally I love it.

Graycap23 said:

KoolEaze said:

Wow, I wasn´t aware of that. Thanks for the info.

I NEED that album now. I have the Japanese version and always wondered why the show was so short.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x4kMoUKglc&list=PLfRDZBNbHr5TuxW_FPhtA3rY-ltiGlF71

Thanks a lot. I watch a lot of music videos on Youtube, including D´Angelo but for some reason the algorithm never suggested this one to me. Very much appreciated !

id:

gandorb said:

It is not like he ruled the R&B and Urban charts other than for his one massive hit "Untilted (How Does It Feel?) and a few other hits.

That was R. Kelly, Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, TLC, Boyz II Men, & Aaliyah. New Jack Swing still had some popularity until around 1994. The 1990s is when R&B radio was turning more into hip hop. Eventually, they became interchangable, either by sound or by many R&B songs had a rapper collaboration. There were also rappers like Bone Thugs, Missy Elliott, Nate Dogg, & Nelly who had a singsong type of cadence. That's probably why the main R&B chart was changed to R&B/Hip Hop. The traditional R&B stations was labeled "Adult R&B", but they play some hip hop too, mostly old school from the 1980s & 1990s. But they've played the Bruno Mars/Cardi B collabo songs a lot.