“We had never heard anyone sing over samples before … We were so caught between rejecting it as untenable and accepting it as vanguard.”īlige also has high-powered admirers outside of R&B and hip-hop. Blige’s 'My Life' came out in 1994, we all just sat in the van scratching our heads,” he writes. In Questlove’s memoir, "Mo’ Meta Blues," which came out last summer, he recalls the first time he heard Blige’s second album. Which is crazy, because Blige is undoubtedly one of the most influential figures of R&B’s last 20 years. (All three put out albums within the last 18 months none got any attention.) If you are a woman making R&B, especially one older than 40, and your name is not Beyoncé, few people care. Even ladies who had more recent success in the first half of the ‘00s, like Ashanti, Toni Braxton and Kelly Rowland, struggle to make a dent now. Other big names from '90s R&B - including Janet Jackson, Brandy and Monica - are rarely heard from. It’s actually remarkable that Blige is even still making music. Even though her fingerprints are everywhere, she is mostly ignored, crowded out by old-school-sounding white belters on one side and the hip indie groups on the other. The Blige connection is strong here too, as the music of this group is explicitly influenced by mainstream ‘90s R&B, which Blige revolutionized. While Smith takes the charts, he doesn’t win (critical) hearts - those are controlled by acts like Little Dragon, How to Dress Well or Jessie Ware, who often record for independent labels. 1 by relying heavily on the gospel-influenced style that Blige has down pat, though he sounds more old-fashioned than she ever did. Blige, a onetime superstar with stacks of Grammies and plenty of hits, now lingers in semi-obscurity - eight of her albums went platinum, but her latest, "Think Like a Man Too," won’t get near that mark.
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