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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I have a tremendous fear that I will ruin NTMuch for myself by listening to it TMuch. I think I've come dangerously close recently, so I'm denying it to myself for a month or so.


Inspired by Luka's Yazzu / world in motion suggestions. But also cos I love it.
 

luka

Well-known member
That's interesting. That's the perfect Mario song. I was a big fan of both of them. There was something similar about their approach although ne yo wasn't as goofy. Something modest and puppydoggish
 

luka

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the buzz i felt coming out of the cinema after seeing the matrix was like nothing else, like a power surge electrifying my whole body. i think it is becasue i am very special and unique like neo, and i got a foretaste of my own destiny and how i can also see the matrix unlike most people who are blue pill losrrs basically.

the ne-yo/mario period of r&b was actually very brief.
there's this which has the most exquisitely written lyrics of any song of the '00s, its so pretty and fits together in a way you dont find much anymore like a little clockwork toy. theres almost always some ungainlienss and awkward phrasing that mars songs but this is perfect and then he repeated the trick
and i really dont know which song is better. this one triggers maybe a bigger pleasure rush.
now what this has in common with let me love you, which was a little earlier, is that the videos have both stars dancing in front of mirrors, practicing their moves and that image is what really defined mario for me becasue he always looked more like chris rock than a r&b star, he didnt inhabit the archetype as usher, for example does, so seeing him practicing and imitating the archtype in a deserted dance studio was really defining for me and sort of summmed up a big part of his appeal, particulalrly as his first hit was just a friend.

i think that for me lloyd came close to this zone a lot of times and thats why i really liked lloyd
 

luka

Well-known member
but what that lloyd song doesnt have, it has the earnestness, and the yearning, but what it doesnt have is the delicacy of phrasing. the way with a lyric, which is ne-yos major gift.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Excellent post(s) on ne-yo. Particularly useful for me as I never listen to lyrics in R&B songs.

I'm a total ne-yo diletantte, I was thinking of this one, really:


Again, there's the delicate, clockwork-toy instrumentation (plus those stuttering chords, the Stargate effect).
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Been dancing around this choice but this is my official COTD for 17/02/2017


A song featuring lines like 'let me put it on you like a white tee on a thug' that still makes me want to cry like a Catholic in St. Peter's.
 

luka

Well-known member
yeah the lloyd is defeintly from a different period, when dream was as his peak, another great period of r&b. (would be fun to map out all these little micro-eras, overlapping often.. tim and bob, dream, ne-yo/stargate, etc etc) i was just focussing on something about how he presents rather than the song itself i guess.

when i mention lyrics im thinking more about patterns, the metrical qualities, the rhythms and how they intermesh rather than the words per se.
 

CrowleyHead

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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jQybgJCswF0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

On the subject of Ne-Yo penned gems.

I hate "Let Me Love You", the song is killed for me by how trash his voice is. 90s to 00s R&B got ethered because there was a sea of guys who didn't know how to sing after the wake of New Jack Swing and you saw this weird split where people with gospel quartet training didn't go into into R&B (the weird world of like, Kirk Franklin style big biz gospel had started so you could easily get indoctrinated) and you had garbage harmonizing groups. Boyz ii Men, atrocious, should've been sent off a cliff before an album ever came out. Aaron Hall, I love, but has some sort of psychotic disorder where he hears all notes in sharp with vibrato for no fucking reason. John Legend is like this but worse.

Devante Swing from Jodeci once broke this down in an interview where he talked about still trying to construct songs compositionally and get away from the screaming soloing style (see: K-Ci without Devante), but he always had to fight K-Ci and Jojo's instincts. The dude from Mint Condition also never wrote in this style, which is why Neo-Soul people claim him even though Mint Condition are basically a New Jack Swing band.

Anyway after that guys were into the songwriting, placement, lyrical thing. Or they were just like, kids who grew up wanting to be MJ and Usher, that model of the dancing R&B singer. Dru Hill obviously followed that in the boyband model, as well as B2K. But again, the singing in these groups were often useless. Even Slim from 112, that weird toothless yodeling hillbilly voice of his was great, but it wasn't great 'singing'... And the R&B Industry learned really quick nobody wants Strong Masculine R&B Singers at that point, because it always looked contrived. Tank and Jaheim, for all their talents, their insistent need to prove they were "thuggish", was stupid and constantly held them back. Trey Songz weird insistence on the du-rags for the first two albums and trying to convince people he wasn't fey was comical and misguided, but he got into his whole relentless idiocy thing and that's why he ended up thriving.

Early 00s is about Ne-Yo, then mid to late period 00s you have Dream for a minute and then Trigga for me. From Trey you get Jeremih, Weeknd and so on.
 
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