R&B you should know and love
- Thread starter luka
- Start date
Corpsey
call me big papa
I have a very special and secrete perspective on rnb cos I never get any action whatsoever. That changes the emotional tenor of songs about shagging. Fills them with a deep melancholy charge. This is probably the same perspective that informed Burial sampling RnB. Compare how UK garage producers in designer clothes popping bubbly on the white house lawn sampled RnB.
I didn't "get" r&b until I was in my 20s because I didn't understand truly the emotions you find in r&b. Like I could tell a song was horny or heartbroken or whatever but I couldn't relate. Well, I don't think relate is the right word - because it's a genre based on performance and demonstration, r&b is all outsize emotions that you can insert yourself into, whether its sexier than sex itself or sadder than sadness itself etc.
craner
Beast of Burden
I really love this song not just because of the light and airy Jam and Lewis production but also because I am a man with sensitivity and if you listen to too much New Jack Swing in one go you start to feel like a persecuted minority. With one deft silk blow, this song resets the balance.
can't believe I forgot about "Sensitivity" it is such a perfect song. Amazing how it manages to be so American yet it has that Soul II Soul UK bounce, smooth like disco but with a light tuffness. Also it's one of those rare songs where a man is trying to be seductive and manages it without being either sleazy or wimpish.
Corpsey
call me big papa
Did you come up with this? It's brilliant.
As I said just up there, for me, the everpure pale incel, RNB is tragically aspirational music that I listen to in much the same spirit as the tragic widower flips puddle-eyed through photos of his late lamented never to be resurrected wife. But more so.
Corpsey
call me big papa
That's presumably why I once spent a good two hours in a tent at Bestival literally weeping to SWV and Usher songs.
Although in the case of, say, "U Don't Have To Call" it was tears of selfless regret for the universal poignancy of fleeting beauty.
I was doing it for all those youngsters out there in the fields, taking drugs and shagging.
Although in the case of, say, "U Don't Have To Call" it was tears of selfless regret for the universal poignancy of fleeting beauty.
I was doing it for all those youngsters out there in the fields, taking drugs and shagging.
craner
Beast of Burden
This is only true if you want it to be so.
Corpsey
call me big papa
I'm Tiresias at the orgy.
craner
Beast of Burden
That's the pleasure of life: framing random actions and events in a narrative drama. A sign of depression is not being able to do that, a total inability to tolerate or create illusions and aspirations which are both closely related and indispensable. I can see that to somebody in state of depression, R&B could be pure torture. I always go back to how much heartbreak I channeled through Jagged Edge's 'Walked Outta Heaven': it was the perfect song at the right moment, a vehicle for expressing and dramatizing my own emotions. It magnified them, but also stopped them becoming destructive.