Orbitalaspect: marry me.

Wow. I feel like I just read an op-ed from a music news site. "The State Of Modern Pop".:laugh:heart

I'm not gonna lie, I lol'd

Um, no. Maybe you like to think that when a person of color low-brows an entire genre of music that it's still "crashing into a white-dominated world" and it's "courageous". I, however, look at the state of FKA, Kelela, Sevdaliza, and certainly people like Aurora (who, oh my god, what a cringefest is her entire career. Her entire story is: Hey, I'm a weirdo, but my music is totally mainstream. Um, no. Take a seat... anywhere among the endless number of seats someone like you should be taking for even suggesting that singing a pop song while pretending you're having a seizure in a forest setting makes you an "artist".) and think: TRY. PLEASE TRY.

They broke the ridiculous stereotype of POC only being able to make R&B and Hip Hop (which I could write a cuss-laden diatribe on how Brandy's Never Say Never, Full Moon, and ESPECIALLY Afrodisiac were only labeled R&B because Brandy is black, and that all of those albums deserved to be given the same attention as releases by Britney and Christina in the late 90s and early 00s), but they're falling into the same trap of regurgitating stale themes in R&B and Hip Hop. If you're going to break the mold: break. it.

FKA Twigs. "Water Me" is about love and sex. "Two Weeks" is about love and sex. "Pendulum" is... wait for it... about being lonely and wanting love and sex! Are you kidding me? What is this doing for black artists crossing into this genre? That the only people making the cross over want to talk about sex, love, instagram, racism, and every other extremely stereotypical topic to R&B and Hip Hop? Like, you want to talk about it, fine: Tell me how Kelela's Take Me Apart is remotely comparable to Solange Knowles' A Seat at the Table? Please, by all means, you can make $%^& up if you have to. But tell me how big ol' "avant garde" Kelela did even a comparable job of merging the sound and lyrical fortitude that Solange Knowles did on tracks like Don't Touch My Hair.

You can hear how critically important Solange's sound, lyrics, and representations are on that album. Why is Solange surrounded by young black guys with silkened hair wearing jump suits? Because that is a vignette of black history in America from the civil rights era. Why is she flailing her arms and saying "What you say to me?!" over and over? Because she's making point that she's fed up with all the drama and interest in her hair. WHY was the album called A Seat at the Table? Because Solange wanted the record to be a conversation with white America. And the even more brilliant side to that? It's an album. The only person talking at the table is Solange, so as a white listener, you can only listen.

I'm all for POC expanding boundaries. But let's get real here, you can't do this kind of music the minimal amount of effort most rappers put into their tracks these days. You're not going to come out of the studio after a week with a Tha Carter III-equivalent avant garde record. It just doesn't happen. And I say this because people like Brian Eno (who has worked with Coldplay a lot on their records), and Bjork, and Tori Amos, and all these other artists will pour months into their work. Did you know Bjork and Arca spent an entire week making bird noises in the woods just for the ~two minutes of sounds on Utopia that transition between tracks at the beginning of the album? And just keep in mind that Utopia is Bjork's lowest charting release ever. So, she's clearly not doing this kind of work for the attention.

Like I said, if FKA comes back with something breathtaking, I'm all ears. But if every damn song, or even every other song, comes off like it got about as much thought as the artist might put into choosing what hashtags they put on every post for the week, I'm on the fence. We've got droughts out here, dude. And I'm not about wasting water on something that isn't going growing.

Edit: Let's also talk about rap music since I'm so damn critical of it, and I don't want you to bounce back with another dumb "you're just criticizing it because they're POC" comment. The absolute best thing to happen to Migos on "MotorSport"? Cardi B. The best thing to happen to Nicki Minaj in the last year? Cardi B. The best thing to happen at all to hip hop in the last year? Cardi B, Remy Ma, and Lil Kim returning and dragging Nicki back into what she does best: rap. Nobody is shedding a tear over Lil Wayne not getting his album out right now. And I've seen so many people say that Drake is so stupidly overrated. And I agree with it all. Cardi, Remy, and Kim are bringing back the unity that made rap an iconic sound of the 90s. They're taking it back to its 90s era roots, where bitches were gunnin' for other bitches and it wasn't cool to RE-USE THE SAME DISS (eh-hem... NICKI?!) on 7 different features in a 4 month period. The more these ladies move forward and bring along others (Queen Pen, Charli Baltimore... PLEASE.) the better everyone gets. But for the first time in almost 3 decades, the ladies are carrying the entire rap game's credibility.

Now, I'm going to shut up and drop the conversation. I've said my peace, and way way more that I would share normally only at the kitchen table. Y'all have a good time and I'm migrating over to the new thread to pick up on following Utada.

Edit 2: A good example of someone who knows their shit in the cross-overs is Azealia Banks. If you have not made Yung Rapunxel an active part of your life, you are completely missing what it looks like when actual talent brings actual work to a genre. She nailed the fuck out of that track and it still blows my mind 3 years later.

Azealia Banks also spent days cleaning up the chicken blood in her closet to revive her failing career due to her attitude, so probably not the person you want to prop up.

Can you please?

And I totally agree with you on Azealia's attitude being what brings her down. But hear me out on this: When has it EVER been OK for a black girl to be angry? Like ever? Has there ever been a point where we went, "Hey, this chick has a good reason to be swinging at people?" Because I feel like pointing a finger at Azealia Banks' attitude sometimes is like pointing a finger at POC and going, "You can't be angry." And why? Why not?! Sure, she's said some extremely homophobic and totally racist crap, and she's been xenophobic and just an all-out weirdo at times, but watch the video for Yung Rapunxel. There's a total point to every cut in that video, and it's so obvious what she's saying in scenes like her whipping her hair back and forth against the green screen or smashing a bottle on a cop's helmet, or laying on the ground surrounded by riot police. And that track is what I consider to be the best example of someone taking that topic and crossing over with it because it's totally, completely solid as a work piece. You just can't look at any part of the lyrics, or the PV, or the artist and say, "Any single part of this doesn't make sense," without missing the point completely.

And I just want to see FKA, Sevdaliza, and Kelela bring that fire to the table. Show me the passion and connect the dots for me--especially for me. Because what FKA does may make sense to some POC, but I'm listening and I'm not connecting the dots because I don't know what the hell any of it means. And if the point is for FKA to get an equal shot at an audience, I'm going to need some help here because I'm not black, I'm not a POC, and I have no clue what any of these references to that culture mean.

I'll keep this short. Never Say Never was not an R&B record. There is nothing on that album that remotely qualifies as R&B when you are listening to other well-known R&B artists from the same time, like Mary J Blige. And what a goddamn shame too. Because when Brandy did songs like U Don't Know Me Like U Used To (and sure she worked with Darkchild), but the entire PV was about as aligned to the BSB/NSYNC/Britney/Christina-style PVs that you can get. It was a fucking awesome track too. And did it EVER get serviced to mainstream radio? No. But did it sound like everything else that was on mainstream-fucking-radio? YES.

Now, let's get to Full Moon. There isn't a single. goddamn. non-electronica. track. on. that. album. "What About Us?", "Full Moon", "I Thought", and "Can We" --all electronic tracks. Brandy really threw herself into the pop sphere with that record. And the only argument I need to make here about Brandy being black being the reason Full Moon got labeled an R&B record is if you listen to Britney Spears' Britney and listen to Full Moon back-to-back. Listen to Christina's Stripped then listen to Full Moon back-to-back. If you don't hear the exact same R&B/Hip Hop tinge on every track of those records, with the only difference being Britney's work with Max Martin, you're deaf. Plain and simple: You're fucking deaf. I don't even need to bring up the fact that I'm A Slave 4 U was produced by the Neptunes... but is it labeled an R&B track? Nope. It's called "Dance-Pop". Was it sent to mainstream radio? Yup! Do you think "What About Us?", which is clearly NOT an R&B track, was labeled "Dance-Pop"? Here's the fucking link so you can check yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_A..._(Brandy_song)! Here, you can also see if "Full Moon" was labeled "Dance-Pop": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Moon_(Brandy_song). And seriously, go back and listen to I'm A Slave 4 U or Dirty and then listen to Full Moon and What About Us? Same era, comparable styles of music, completely different segments of radio.

The biggest fuck-up was with Afrodisiac. I want you to listen to Afrodisiac then listen to Britney's In The Zone back-to-back. I don't even have fucking words. I can't hear a single fucking difference between those records. But Britney's a POP artist and her shit gets sent to mainstream radio. Brandy, however? Not a SINGLE one of the songs on Afrodisiac was serviced to Top 40 radio. And keep in mind the title track was released as a single. I don't even words for that. Brandy was let down so hard by Atlantic on Afrodisiac. And I don't why she blames Darkchild, because there was never anything wrong with his production -- he's one of the best cross-genre producers that's ever come out of the 90s. Also I just want to point out that Darkchild did almost all of the production on the Spice Girls' Forever record... which isn't labeled an R&B album.

I think I've made my point.

OK. I'll let this go now! <3 But seriously, if you guys find an artist like FKA or Kelela who clearly has the story laid out, I'm all ears. Feel free to throw me a name or two!

Edit: And thank you all for being pretty cool even though I've been really frank and pretty tactless about my opinions.

We have a new thread. Post this there or move on.