I used to be an avid R&B fan. When I say avid, I mean that I probably know
every word to ever R&B song that has been released between 1990 and 2010.
However, over the past year, I stopped listening to the entire genre
altogether, mainly because current r&b songs can be summed up in one word:
trash.
First of all, I’m tired of hearing about sex. Every single
song that any R&B artist puts out nowadays is about sex – Between Trey
Songz, Kelly Rowland, Jeremih, Chris Brown, Rihanna (her genre is
questionable), Ciara and Lloyd, they might as well start directing
pornographies. It’s not even like their
songs are romanticized interpretations of sex, where you could get somewhat of
an impression that these artists actually have emotions (e.g. the Boyz II Men’s
classic, “I’ll Make Love To You”); rather, it’s the trashy, raunchy version
that appeals to hormone-raging pre-teens/teens. When I hear my
thirteen/fourteen year old students reciting every Trey Songz lyric aloud, it
makes me nauseous.
I’m not sure when this transition happened, because of
course there used to be the sex-crazed R&B artists of the 90s (e.g. R.
Kelly & Jodeci), but there were also enough artists that were putting out
songs about actual emotions like love and sadness and anger like Boys II Men,
Jagged Edge, SWV, Xscape, Destiny’s Child… I can go on and on. On the other hand, today, there are twenty Trey
Songz artists for every one Ne-Yo out there.
Secondly, it feels like these songwriters have half a brain.
I’m not saying you have to be a college graduate to write music because obviously
you don’t need a degree to have an innate talent for songwriting. However, when
you have to resort to spelling out the letters of a word because you can’t
figure out anything else that rhymes with the preceding verse, I think you need
to re-think your career choice.
Anyway, I can go on and on because this is a topic that I’m
very passionate about, but I won’t bore my readers. So instead, I will just
conclude that I have just added 92.5 (Country) to my radio presets because until
Ne-Yo can write some more quality records to balance out the current mainstream
playlists, I will resort to Taylor Swift, Brad Paisley and Lady Antebellum to
get my emotional fix.
Don’t judge.
Sigh. Lady antebellum maybe. And that's a big maybe. But really? What has PA done to you?!
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