It has finally happened to those younger people that used to call me an “Old G” they are now being referred to as an “Old G”. I often received that label because of my musical preferences and age. Now those same people that were 30 ten years ago have begun to creep into the lexicon of life called “living and reflecting”, and swearing that somehow when they were younger everything was better than what the youngsters are experiencing today. Yeah, I remember when I was 18 and Funk music had emerged hitting the airwaves hard and heavy like Rap and Hip Hop music of today. Bands like Parliament, Con Funk Shun, Bar Kays, and Cameo ruled the music scene and the attention of the youth. I would kind of chuckle when the “Old G’s” during that era would talk about the Impressions, Four Tops, Temptations, Bobby Blue Bland, and others. They probably laughed to themselves realizing that I too would become an “Old G” one day. Below is a list of identifiers of the New Old School Folks.
You Know You Are A Part Of The “New Old School” if:
If you were in the 6th grade in 1986 when the Jeri Curl was the biggest hair fashion, and Full Force Band was the band everyone partied to
If you ever owned or wanted a Michael Jackson ‘Beat it Jacket’ in the 1980.
If you purchased fresh off the shelf Run DMC, KRS1, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, and Eric B. & Rakim albums.
If you purchased your albums from Sound Warehouse and similar record stores.
If you had a turntable to play your albums on.
If you owned an 8 track and or a cassette player.
If you tuned in to Soul Train every Saturday.
If you owned or wanted a Buick Regal
Just a reminder of who you were, and who you have become my “Old G’s”!
It did not matter what time it was there was one thing for sure the music would be playing in my room! Went to sleep with the sweet sounds or R&B and woke up to them. Back in the early 70’s in the Summertime the record companies would release new albums. I remember being in my room laying on my bed with the window up and a box fan in the window attempting to keep me cool as my feet rested on the window sill listening to the newly released album by the Temptations singing ‘Just My Imagination’ with my eyes closed. There was a certain kind of bliss I was feeling, and at the age 11 that was a great thing. I knew the world was large and full of opportunities to experience different aspects of life. Through music I would exchange my realities for fantasies, oh what a wonderful world I lived in Temptations in the morning and the Bar Kays at night! You see music is one of those things that can follow you all of your life, and help to determine how you perceive the world.
At an early age I fell in love with R&B music because it offered me messages of hope and love, and it soothed me with its melodic and soulful sounds. So many iconic soul artists from the R&B genre built the foundation for many of the contemporary genres of today such as Pop Music, Hip Hop, and Neo-Soul. Do you believe Michael Jackson would have been as prolific without the musing of James Brown? Do you believe Chris Brown would have found the acclaim he has without him being compared to Michael Jackson? What about Sam Smith of Joss Stone utilizing the soulful intonations of Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, and other soul masters? Tell me can Rhianna believe that she could be outrageous without the blessings of Grace Jones and Tina Turner that preceded her? When Robin Thicke and Pharrell were embroiled in the copyright infringement controversy over Marvin Gayes iconic song ‘Got To Give It Up’ I knew immediately that Marvin’s family would win the lawsuit, because replicating R&B is not the same as creating soul music. Basically, true R&B listeners know what real heart rendering soul sounds like, and what copied soul sounds like!
So, much of today’s R&B has been diluted with sound effects and voice defects. Many R&B artists of today are afraid to sing out for fear of being discovered as perpetrators. But, there are some R&B artists out there today that are singing their collective butts off, like Leela James, Luke James, Anthony Hamilton, and others to name a few. They may not be considered to be ‘A’ list artists monetarily, but in terms of respecting and creating the essence of R&B they are considered to be ‘A+++’ artists. As an adult today I can still listen to sweet delectable R&B in the Summertime with my feet propped up on the window sill in my bedroom with the window down and the central air keeping me cool and comfortable as I fall into a sweet R&B fantasy of non stop music.
ccasionally, a musical genre will be so sonically revolutionary that it will become untethered from the context of its creation. Styles such as hip-hop or country or house are so broad and mutable, it’s difficult to imagine that they will ever fall out of favour. But these are the exceptions. Most musical genres – UK garage or bluegrass or new rave – are forever linked with their origin story. They, of course, have a loyal hardcore fanbase and continue to produce some new artists, and they may even fall back into favour from time to time, but they remain a trend rather than a transformation.
For a while, it felt like R&B would fall into this transient category. The genre, a child of, but sonically emancipated from, 1940s rhythm and blues reached unparalleled popularity in the 1990s, with new jack swing artists such as Boyz II Men, as well as key girl groups SWV, En Vogue and Destiny’s Child. But by the late 2000s, R&B seemed a niche interest. Even chart-topping pop stars such as Beyoncé and Rihanna, who had first made their mark in R&B, had largely given up on the genre. Meanwhile, some of its biggest remaining stars – Usher, Kelly Rowland and Jennifer Lopez – could only find success as the voices of EDM bangers, their soulful vocal tics ironed out by relentless David Guetta beats. Perhaps most damning of all, “classic R&B” artists were now embarking on slightly tacky package tours – in the same vein as the “sound of the 80s” shows with Toyah Willcox and Sinitta that you see at your local corn exchange – only this time the line-up was Brandy and Toni Braxton.
Yet at the same time, a new generation was coming to appreciate the artistry of a decade earlier, when the likes of Missy Elliott, Timbaland and Darkchild were the architects of an era that produced an improbable number of impeccably crafted hits. R&B started to replace Aldous Huxley as every band’s influence of choice, the genre became the default party music of every club from Dalston to Doncaster.
Frank Ocean performs Pyramids.
That influence started to take effect on new music. A string of albums combining a heavy R&B influence with a deeply 2010s ennui started coming out, most notably Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange, Miguel’s Kaleidoscope Dream, the Weeknd’s House of Balloons and Solange’s True. Those were the tip of an iceberg labelled indie-R&B or PBR&B (a gag about Pabst Blue Ribbon, a popular brand of lager with America’s hipster classes). The key to this sound was progressive electronic experimentation, coupled with introspective lyrics, often about alienation and excess (rather than love and heartbreak that dominated the genre’s previous incarnation).
Flash forward a few years and R&B has clearly become entrenched within the musical landscape. Some of 2015’s most eagerly awaited albums are by R&B artists (Drake, The Weeknd, Frank Ocean, Miguel). The “hipster” tag has worn away and now the tentacles of that sound can be heard far beyond the blogs. It’s engulfed hip-hop, to the point that many of today’s biggest rappers aren’t interested in rapping any more at all, but really want to be singers. From giants such as J Cole and Drake to relative newcomers Young Thug and Fetty Wap, nearly all employ a mixture of Auto-Tune and singing in their verses.
Alessia Cara: ‘We make our own genres now.’ Photograph: Larry Marano/Getty Images
R&B has also replaced house music as the underground resource from which pop music mines all its best ideas. While Jason Derulo and Chris Brown stay atop the charts with an aspartame version of classic R&B, there’s also a new generation of stars who draw from the genre’s latest incarnation. “I think back in the 90s there was a definite R&B sound that was easily distinguishable,” says Alessia Cara, a big, new, major-label signing whose Isaac Hayes-sampling single Here owes plenty to the Weeknd’s feeling-glum-in-the-club shtick. “But now, I feel like music has become tailored to the specific artist. There is no longer a ‘set’ R&B sound. There is a ‘Frank Ocean’ sound and a ‘Miguel’ sound. I love that music is doing that. We make our own genres now and it’s a really cool thing to me. I don’t necessarily think I’m an R&B artist. Overall, I’d say I fall under the alternative pop category.”
For some, this acceptance of R&B as the new, forward-thinking frontier of mainstream pop would be seen as a victory, but of course, as with any time a genre becomes detached from the community that created it, there are critics who feel that the genre has become a gentrified imitation of its former self. Journalist Alex Macpherson has taken particular umbrage at this new wave of R&B. Writing in the Guardian at the end of 2012, he said: “The idea that it’s taken a wave of sadsack dudes with pensive feelings and washed-out reverb to save a genre with such a rich and varied past and present is sadly inevitable. It’s less revolution than it is gentrification: a narrowing of the focus to a set of values deemed acceptable to a largely male, middle-class audience.”
There is some truth to this. The resurgence of R&B has certainly been helped by a white, cool crowd who are happy to post Drake lyrics on their Instagram but wouldn’t be seen dead at a Ciara show. But it is not the case that R&B has become disengaged from questions of race and gender. Solange, for example, has repeatedly challenged music bloggers who heap praise on the latest hot thing without understanding the context. Back at the start of 2013, she wrote: “Some of these music blogs could actually benefit from hiring people who reallyunderstand the culture of R&B to write about R&B… Ivy League credentials don’t give you any insight on ‘grading’ a rapper’s body of work… when you’ve had no access to the real culture.” She came good by launching the Saint Heron blog, label and compilation, a brand that specialises in experimental R&B from those embedded in the genre’s history.
Most significantly, the rise of PBR&B has also reignited interest in the genre’s classic artists. Ciara, for example, is perhaps the most inventive R&B singer in recent memory and has been around since the early 2000s. In 2010, her spectacularly reviewed and banger-filled record Basic Instinct missed out on the Billboard top 40 entirely. In 2013, one year after Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange, she released her self-titled follow-up; it charted at No 2, beaten only by the latest Jay Z album.
Two golden-era R&B stars also released landmark albums last year. Mary J Blige’s The London Sessions saw her paired with contemporary soul and dance acts from the UK while D’Angelo’s Black Messiah, a treatise on racial politics and the evolution of black music in America, was one of the most spectacular and critically acclaimed records in the genre’s history.
And now new stars are emerging that straddle the genre’s past and present, most spectacularly Tinashe, whose sex-positive upbeat R&B owes plenty to Ashanti and Timbaland. Tinashe might be the best R&B artist in a generation, songs such as 2 On and All Hands on Deck could easily have topped the charts in the late 90s. But without the likes of Ocean and Miguel, it’s difficult to imagine her being given the opportunity. Even the UK, with its chequered history of R&B stars (here’s looking at you, Lemar), is producing inventive, genre-bending singers such as FKA Twigs andMura Masa, who combine the experimental end of R&B with Britain’s own history in soulful underground electronica.
A few years ago, it was easy to be dismissive of PBR&B as a hipster fad, but in fact it’s sewn up the genre’s future and now, once again, it’s difficult to imagine a world without R&B.
