“Can We Talk” for a minute? What happened to R&B? If I had a dollar for every time time I’ve overheard someone talking about R&B not making them feel how it used to, I’d be very, very wealthy. Now, this is not your typical article where I point out a bevy of vague talking points of how the “heart” is missing or people just aren’t as talented. There are many talented singers, producers, and musicians. What we suffer is a lack of soul. Soul is what connects human beings to other human beings, soul is what comes from life through the human experience and the interpreters of these experiences are writers.
R&B has too much rhythm and not enough blues. R&B as presently constructed, does not give the average listener what they need to feel immersed in a memorable experience. It is too exhaustive, it overthinks itself. What the world of R&B needs to understand is that a moment can be just as potent as the story as a whole, especially in song, that it is not cheap or not to bask in a moment.
Song writing is a creative outlet similar to painting, the ability to capture a moment into a lifetime. What made songs like Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love” so iconic is its simplicity. She wasn’t trying to save the world or present an image of being super deep or introspective. All she wanted to communicate is love and it shows.
One of the many incredible things about sound is that it can communicate ideas without being formed into a word, in many ways it is an universal language, itself. Pitch, tone, and enunciation of a lyric can express feelings that might not be spoken, feelings we can give names to. Pain, sadness, joy, and anger can all be expressed through these methods and others such as ad-libs. Every time I hear Michael Jackson sing about the first time seeing the child’s eyes in Billie Jean, I can feel the pain and conviction he felt in that moment. If R&B can get back to this, it can surely recover and get back to the prominence it once had.
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