what the **** happened to rnb????

[Steve Piffler]

Great points,I guess we had to expect that though,these are young black males and females so of course they would gain inspiration from hiphop.....whoever mentioned the lack of producers wuz a great point too,I wuz listening to sum old soul music and appreciating the real instrumentation instead of just sum "beat",that along with beat switches and the producer actually making the beat build to a climax as well as low points....hard for me to explain cuz I don't know shyt about production...but just lack of instruments and everything is just noticebale,black music is just overall more souless...and I don't just know if that's just from our culture "blending" in more with white america and losing our identity a little which I guess at sum point is bound to happen more and more....I can't blame white folks for the lack of poeetic value in a lot of rnb now,seems like a lot of song writers are learning to write from rappers,or we just don't have deep mufukas like we used too...not as many nikkas write poetry,if u write poetry u rap...r kelly had a good point too talkin about the newer guys,lotta the same proble hiphop is having


“I think these guys are good…they have the potential to be in it f time,” Kelly said of the trio. “That’s only if they start to write abou writing a good song. I’ve seen a lot of guys that people say were them come and go. They have to start writing about everyday lif in the game and push you to legendville. If you are in this music in it to be a legend.” As for all the talk of R&B music being dead, Kelly bristles at such believe R&B is dead and I don’t think it’s going to die as long as I confidently says. “I think it has caught a bad, terrible cold. It has I’m the doctor. When I come back with my next album and we are going to be rid of this cold.” VIBE’s full-length Q&A with R.Kelly featured in our 'Big List' issue

artists who write and/or produce their own material have a special connection to it. it actually happened to them and singing it brings them into the emotions that they felt when they were going through it. that emotion translates through the vocals and you can hear and feel it. you connect to it. you can feel it in your soul when a song is coming from a personal and sincere place. it's something that's missing right now. you hear flashes of that same feeling here and there in a few recent artists, but not nearly as much as back in the 70's. the 70's for r&b was like the 90's was for hip hop. the golden era. examples:


that nikka MEANT that shyt!!!!



[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtBEGdzHMhM[/ame]
ignore the simp ass video . i couldn't find the song on youtube, and this was the only video that had the actual song and not a cover. at this nikka tho....

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoYQavWYX58[/ame]
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8BzelrtqnY[/ame]
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REdEUoLYBQw[/ame]
you can hear the PAIN in Teddy P's voice....those runs...

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvCoNio7gBk[/ame]
she FELT that shyt....

 

[Roovers410]

gotta love the 70's

 

[Looty]

Two words....

Auto Tune

 

[Homeboy Runny-Ray]

You ain't gotta dig THAT deep to find rnb...granted you'll mostly only find the Timberlake/Adele/Robin Thicke appropriated variety on pop outlets...but just tune in to your local urban adult contemporary radio station, the actual home of real rnb...for black folks, it's whatever station your mama 'nem listen to when it ain't on the gospel station...it'll invariably have a name like "Foxy 100.SuchAndSuch" and have Tom Joyner on in the morning...the playlist currently looks something like this:

BDSRadio Charts

yea. or the station that has the steve Harvey morning show.

I don't know why people typically don't acknowledge these stations on here.

 

[rantanamo]

The problem is there arent any real R&B producers out there. I mean people who can actually create music and can craft a record where the music and vocals enhance each other. Now its just people singing over rap beats. The music is nothing more than a generic looped sample that would be right at home on a no name nikkas mixtape or some dude playing a simple piano riff.

When is the last time you heard a record with some music on it that was fukking with Kool and the Gang, Ohio Players, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, or Earth Wind and Fire,

This is probably closest to what I would say. After the last thread like this, i really made an effort to listen to more radio and link off of artists on Pandora, youtube and some other online sources. I have also returned to the popular radio stations in Dallas to compare to the R&B station 105.7 to see what's in rotation. My gf is all into pop stations so i get a good comparison to that. What I've found is that R&B on the hip-hop and r&b stations is mostly singing over rap beats and rap artists sort of semi-singing. Tamar and Ciara seem to be the only quality r&b songs in rotation. Sorry, but Miguel and Frank Ocean are ok, not that great. Everything else seems to be trap rap and the most c00ning ghetto commercials I've ever heard. Girrrrrrl, you better call Ijustgothit.com That would be K104 and 97.9. 105.7 is a dedicated R&B station. Lots of the new stuff played that's in this thread. So the R&B is there. I would agree that in general its not crafted with the same mastery that even 90s R&B was, but there's a lot of good stuff.

So, there you, there's good r&b out there. Why isn't it popular? I would say culture and technicality. Culturally I look at it as the same reason hip-hop culture is becoming pop. Cultures in the US are simply merging. Black wealth is growing quickly and church attendance is falling. Those differentiators are going away that made black music special and soulful. That culture we are moving towards is much more violence oriented than love oriented. Everytime I'm driving somewhere with my gf and I'm listening to some R&B love song, she asks me, why did they whine so much? Why were they so mushy? Its too much romance. Do women like to be romanced anymore or is it just sex now, then complain there wasn't enough romance. Or do they just want muscles and a pretty face? You see where I'm going? In that merging of culture, women are merging into male culture as well. Yes, they've always thrown panties at certain artists, but those artists were often not attractive at all and even overweight or homosexual, but their voice and demeanor were enough to illicit panty throw. now the songs that are most popular are about pure thirst.

From the technical side, I agree that there are no great black song crafters that are out there that are the big name, big label variety. Now the genre is at the mercy of rap moguls, gangsters and beat makers. Even if you are a song crafter, you're probably working for Jay-Z or Birdman. Was watching an interview with Grant Hill and Tamia today, and it made me sad to see Quincy Jones working with her during one of her video shoots. Think of the credentials of a man like Quincy Jones. Those are the dudes that should be handling R&b and passing those skills on, not Diddy and Ferrell. Its even more sad because a lot of these old r&b heads are still performing and making music at a much higher level than their descendents. If record companies really wanted R&B back, they would be straight up after these people to write/produce/mentor these young cats on major labels.

 

[Homeboy Runny-Ray]

i'll say this much.

there needs to be a movement similar to new jack swing in the late '80s/early '90s. the same way new jack swing gave r&b that spark when it was starting to dwindle.

we need something that can give the genre a boost. something that everybody can rock with.

lets be honest. the real r&b singers and artists are pretty dam dull right now for the most part. meanwhile, the artists that have some spark aren't very talented. theres very few that combine both. we need to get back to that.

 

[Wild self]

If we dont get our act together, we gone b asking this same question bout hip hop in 5 to 10 years.

Yep, nikkas this time around voluntarily fukked themselves up. They want that CAC money and not have talent to get rich. These days, cats just want to get famous for show money and to fukk mad bytches, while thinking that talent is wack. shyt like this, i wonder what is gonna happen to black people in another 10 years.

 

[Wild self]

this is what happened.

Black community has been taught and conditioned to have the shortest attention span imaginable while at the same time only being comfortable with a life that's right in front of their noses.

Trash influences and no sense of history. Folks swearing "old school" is 2005 and their musical influences are all 25 and younger.

nikkas only like what they're told to like and they're too lazy and scared to even dig in them crates or say they like anything different. You wait for them to discover some new shyt themselves and they just sit there drooling out the mouth.

And thats a fukking shame.

It's like when Menace 2 Society came out. Every nikka and their momma started riding around bumping Computer Love and Al Green. Wasn't nobody thinking about that shyt before hand. Nobody was thinking about it afterwards.

When you brought it up that they aint say shyt about it before, nikkas was like " what I ALWAYS liked this shyt cause this what real nikkas always listen to my MOMMA played this while I was growing up-"

bytch nikka you lying and your momma ain't shyt but a gospel music listening whore.

And it ain't like Rap music. This is R&B we're talking about. there should NEVER be a sense of "turn off the radio and you'll find it" with R&B. The radio was BUILT off R&B.


I'm sorry, man. I know I type a fukking essay every time shyt like this comes up, but it pisses me off. It's like a symptom of a disease. The music is a reflection of the culture and mindset of a people. And the greater GREATER majority of our people's mentality is fukked up.

GREAT Post!

We are fukked as a community that has some super-short attention spans that refuse to break conformity. The old school R & B has been formed in the church like Boyz to Men, old school R. Kelly, and so on. Now that Gen Y has abandoned the church for the club, you hear bullshyt that fits its superficial nature of the club (grinding on a chick, fukking her raw, being a player). Love doesn't exist in our society very much anymore, and R & B reflects that.

 

[Wild self]

This is probably closest to what I would say. After the last thread like this, i really made an effort to listen to more radio and link off of artists on Pandora, youtube and some other online sources. I have also returned to the popular radio stations in Dallas to compare to the R&B station 105.7 to see what's in rotation. My gf is all into pop stations so i get a good comparison to that. What I've found is that R&B on the hip-hop and r&b stations is mostly singing over rap beats and rap artists sort of semi-singing. Tamar and Ciara seem to be the only quality r&b songs in rotation. Sorry, but Miguel and Frank Ocean are ok, not that great. Everything else seems to be trap rap and the most c00ning ghetto commercials I've ever heard. Girrrrrrl, you better call Ijustgothit.com That would be K104 and 97.9. 105.7 is a dedicated R&B station. Lots of the new stuff played that's in this thread. So the R&B is there. I would agree that in general its not crafted with the same mastery that even 90s R&B was, but there's a lot of good stuff.

So, there you, there's good r&b out there. Why isn't it popular? I would say culture and technicality. Culturally I look at it as the same reason hip-hop culture is becoming pop. Cultures in the US are simply merging. Black wealth is growing quickly and church attendance is falling. Those differentiators are going away that made black music special and soulful. That culture we are moving towards is much more violence oriented than love oriented. Everytime I'm driving somewhere with my gf and I'm listening to some R&B love song, she asks me, why did they whine so much? Why were they so mushy? Its too much romance. Do women like to be romanced anymore or is it just sex now, then complain there wasn't enough romance. Or do they just want muscles and a pretty face? You see where I'm going? In that merging of culture, women are merging into male culture as well. Yes, they've always thrown panties at certain artists, but those artists were often not attractive at all and even overweight or homosexual, but their voice and demeanor were enough to illicit panty throw. now the songs that are most popular are about pure thirst.

From the technical side, I agree that there are no great black song crafters that are out there that are the big name, big label variety. Now the genre is at the mercy of rap moguls, gangsters and beat makers. Even if you are a song crafter, you're probably working for Jay-Z or Birdman. Was watching an interview with Grant Hill and Tamia today, and it made me sad to see Quincy Jones working with her during one of her video shoots. Think of the credentials of a man like Quincy Jones. Those are the dudes that should be handling R&b and passing those skills on, not Diddy and Ferrell. Its even more sad because a lot of these old r&b heads are still performing and making music at a much higher level than their descendents. If record companies really wanted R&B back, they would be straight up after these people to write/produce/mentor these young cats on major labels.

Read the bold, people. Black folk lose they soul and wanting to be like CACs.

 

[malc]

Aaliyah's voice sounded heavenly to me

Chrisette Michelle came out with the beautiful Soul R&B albums: I AM and Epiphany, then Def Jam

nearly dismantled her career when they let her switched up her style on her last album. But her new song, is promising that she's back in her r&b/soul/jazz lane

And, Ohio singer Rashad's Museum is a nice current R&B album

musuem was straight heat

 

[Big Boss]

where are the classic, aaliyah,tlc, b2men , keith sweat mary j, 112,r kelly , usher, jaheim , eric robinson , jodeci , carl thomas , faith evans etc albums at.....

not that rnb vs house shyt anno 2013......

goddayummn

Facts

 

[Big Boss]

Adele and Timberlake did their best karaoke impressions of it and c00n azz n1ggas promoted and embraced it...