Justin Timberlake - Man Of The Woods (February 2, 2018) Album • Page 37

Bieber definitely, Ariana Grande too, but it goes further with more general pop artists that have appropriated many r&b trappings into their music. In fact, r&b has been robbed so thoroughly that people now hear an r&b song by let's say an Ariana Grande and think it's pop.

This is not to say that there aren't artists among them that aren't good or aren't genuine about r&b, but it's still a thing. Citics are complicit in this too by the way.

Also, a lot of r&b artists have started making music that is more pop, indie rock or EDM oriented, potentially as a resulst of the above mentioned development.

 

idk bieber’s greatest commercial success involved him decamping r&b for trop house and edm? ariana synthesizes multiple genres, the only record of hers i’d identify straightforwardly as r&b is yours truly, which was an unsuccessful ‘90s throwback anyway? “side to side” was the most successful thing she’s done recently and it’s cod reggae pop

the “r&b artists shifting toward edm” is a development as old as ne-yo’s “closer”; more recent yet extremely old examples are like...usher 2010-2012

 

Justin clearly sings like an r&b singer, no matter the beat. Same goes for Ariana.

Right, as old as Closer. I said 10 to 12 years. Other big examples are Usher and Rihanna (until Anti that is). Look at artists like them (artists that "pivoted") and compare them to once (mainstream) successful r&b artists that didn't. You can also compare current r&b-ish artists that get a lot of critical attention (i.e attention from, mostly, white people people with musical backgrounds that might not include Brandy album cuts - all credit goes to Solange for that characterization) and those that don't, you'll get a very similar picture. It's just that now EDM has been replaced with pop or indie rock references.

 

justin sings like shit no matter the beat tbh

 

idk feel like there isn’t a one-to-one relationship here. jeremih pivoted with “don’t tell em” which worked and then ultimately put out an r&b album what felt like 12 years later; but ne-yo despite being the most craven pivoter i can think of couldn’t get almost any of his shit to chart significantly unless it was with pitbull

you mean like sza

 

SZA partly applies but there's the whole "we have to cover TDE artists or Twitter'll get mad" thing there. Current Frank Ocean, Weeknd and especially Khalid are better examples in my opinion.

IMPORTANT: this is not, in any way, meant to disparage the music people like Frank or SZA make, or meant to question their motives for incorporating certain references. There's a difference between what individual artists do (and why they do it) and the general development of a genre, even if they end up contributing to that development.

Final words: I'm not trying to run away, but I really don't think I have anything more to say that I haven't already said in one of my last few posts. Also, it's off topic now, so if anyone wants to keep going, they can message me I guess.

 

journals is so fire what the heck

 

i dont think this convo is about quality

 

Speaking of tropical influences I feel like there isn't a lot of convo about the appropriation of that genre. I don't have a problem with artists who enjoy a genre and incorporate it into their sound but give credit to who u owe, respect and appreciate those genres and artists, and when u want middle America coins don't shed it all and do some wholesome outdoors Malibu nonsense to "clean" ur image

 

i think it’s a good record! definitely his best

 

The r&b influence in Shape Of You is the worst

 

Pop music has always borrowed influence from other genres (jazz, blues, R&B, rock, etc). It’s relient on that to exist because pop music has no identity as a stand-alone sound. Whats the beef?

 

You'll get different answers from different people. This is what I say:

1. There is a difference between how you really are and how people might perceive you. If you authentically love or even identify as a part of hip hop music and/or culture (which, for the sake of keeping it brief, includes most post 80s r&b) and care about the people it originated from (see 2), you're not really appropriating (depending on how you define the word) it. People might not recognise that however, even if you are vocal about it (which you definitely should be). It's one of the reasons I'm not extremely quick to judge an artist with regards to that.

2. You should use your platform - especially if a lot of people pay attention to you - to support the people who's culture you're borrowing from (or, if you're an actual rapper or genuine r&s singer, want to be a part of - that is not to say you can't be in a rock band and be part of hip hop culture, but that's a different topic) and to counter forces that marginalise and opress them. You can't just be in it for the fun times, or as Nicki said to Miley: "Come on, you can’t want the good without the bad. If you want to enjoy our culture and our lifestyle, bond with us, dance with us, have fun with us, twerk with us, rap with us, then you should also want to know what affects us, what is bothering us, what we feel is unfair to us. You shouldn’t not want to know that.”

 

correct except that i’d say pop over time developed into its own codified genre which is why you have artists like carly rae jepsen who clearly make pop music but are not traditionally “popular” anymore (a much older rock-oriented example of this is “power pop,” where bands tried to reaccess the “real pop” of the beatles and etc.)

 

good post. my main example of a highly appropriative white pop band who paid due diligence to r&b (to the point of namechecking aretha franklin in their first charting single) is scritti politti, white musicians who absorbed black music who were then reabsorbed into black music (black musicians loved them, miles davis covered them, they wrote for chaka khan, etc.)

 

One definition of pop (next to popular music as opposed to classical music and jazz or pop music as in its own thing like unbornwhiskey described, which can include all kinds of influences if handled with care) is music that inauthentically (even maliciously) steals from genuine genres and cultures to smoothly cobble together a piece of music that is only meant to sell records.

The reason I shit on Justin Timberlake for example is that he has always tried to position himself as being a part of The Culture (or at least as being authentic in his love for it), and he has even been accepted for quite a few years, but every fucking time things went beyond fun and games, he shit the bed. So yeah, he's not a r&b artist (or a "pop artist that makes r&b songs", which in general is kind of a fucked up classification that people make based on race), or even pop artist according to the positive definition of the genre, but rather a pop product designer that appropriates r&b and rap music in order to sell a "safe" version of it to a large amount of people. I'd care significantly less if he never pretended to belong to and care about hip hop and just made his dumb songs.

I'M NOT LOOKING TO DISCUSS JUSTIN AGAIN, HE'S JUST AN EXAMPLE. You can even disagree with me with regards to his character and motives, as long as you understand what I'm trying to say.

 

Your argument seems related to the process of selling out.

This is because you could make a similar argument for any artist that makes it big that comes out of a specific scene (thinking Fall Out Boy & Blink 182 w/ punk, Mumford & Sons w/ folk off the top of my head).

In a sense, they’re all “guilty” of taking elements of a more pure version of a genre, watering them down, and then repackaging them for mass consumption.

What does any artist that you think is guilty of doing this have to do to properly honor their influences?

 

1. Besides the fact that the relationship between white artists and a culture that is predominantly black (at least in terms of creators) is more complicated than the relationship between white artists and a culture that is predominantly white, I also disagree with the comparison you're making. Plenty of rappers that have emerged from within the culture have compromised their music to appeal to a larger audience. We can argue about if that is moral or not, but it's not the same as what someone like Justin does because they still come from within the culture (I'm not going into the factor of race for the sake of keeping it brief, but I hope your understand that factor is real and complicates things even more). The same that goes for those rappers also goes for, lets say, Blink 182, as they emerged from within their culture before they sold out (provided you believe that they did sell out, which is always questionable).

An outsider coming in in order to steal and compromise music and culture in order to sell it is a different thing than an insider making compromises in order to reach a larger audience.

"I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars
They criticized me for it, yet they all yell "holla"
If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be lyrically Talib Kweli
Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense
But I did 5 mill' – I ain't been rhyming like Common since
When your cents got that much in common
And you been hustling since your inception
Fuck perception! Go with what makes sense
Since I know what I'm up against
We as rappers must decide what's most important
And I can't help the poor if I'm one of them
So I got rich and gave back, to me that's the win/win" ~ Jay Z

2.

 

mac miller is another good example i think, he started out in the goofy white frat rap wave but then he started absorbing rap culture and working with great artists and understanding what it was all about and then he started making pretty good music

 

oh also, god, how could i forget, george michael, who seems to embody the shift that both jt and bieber made less successfully

 

prob a book to be written about how for so many male teen pop stars the idea of transitioning into adulthood (itself more a marketing strategy than an actual personal development) is the appropriation and translation of popular forms of black masculinity (zayn for instance could be folded into this)

 

I think that would be interesting because there are probably broadly two groups: those that do it as a marketing strategy and those that pivot towards hip hop because they gained control of their career and that is where their heart is

 

not to mention female pop stars like Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus associating black culture with adulthood and being not that innocent

 

miley is the ultimate example of what not to do lol. used black culture to push her career and music, cashed in on it for a few years, and then talked shit on it on her next more "mature" see: white album

 

Yes, agree with all your points. And I definitely appreciate the complicating factor of race in all of this and how that makes the act of appropriation different from the act of selling out. I just thought it was an interesting parallel to think about, even if it's only tangentially related. In both cases, you have an artist taking a version of something that doesn't really belong to any one single person in the first place, reworking it for a broader audience, and benefiting from it.

Also dig that Jay Z track so 3/3 for you with that post.