The-Dream was back in the spotlight and all over the net last week due to his consecutive sold-out shows in NYC, twitter rants over The-Weeknd, and his shows at SXSW. Not one who is known to hold his thoughts in, Mr. Nash had a recent interview with UK publication The Guardian, in which the mega hitmaker made a bold statement regarding the transition of artists making successful ‘soul’ records these days…
“What’s crazy is that blacks can’t do soul records any more. We love Adele singing it, but Beyoncé singing it? No, the tempo’s too slow, gimme the club hit. Now the blacks in America are responsible for the pop records, and everybody else is singing soulful records. It’s weird to me. We’re pigeonholed over there.”
Woord? What do you think of this statement?? We must say, we had a similar conversation about this as well, though not to the same extent…
In regards to his 2011 free album “1977” and the blunt, confessional tones, Nash maintains he was merely trying to reconnect with the roots of his genre. “It’s called rhythm and blues; they just took the blues out of it for so long.”
While there is no set release date for his fourth studio album “Love IV…” you can rest assured he is leaving the psychiatrist couch-esque soul-barring themes for his next free album. Tentatively entitled “1984: Persona Of Love,” on which he intends to explore love’s masochistic allure, “Love is like a rocker who jumps off the stage and whacks you with his guitar, but you still go back for more,” he explained.
The delay of “Love IV” may continue as Nash is still writing new songs to add to the tracklist. Yet despite a newly acquired sonic “heaviness”, he assures that normal service will be triumphantly resumed. When asked, “What are its lyrical themes?” he mused theatrically, “Hmm, let me think. Sex, sex … and more sex.”
I agree to some extent. When you think of many of the Black artists who are doing big things on Billboard these days, they’re only being recognized for the uptempo, bass-heavy and hypersexual themed songs. I really do appreciate people like Estelle, Luke James, Marsha Ambrosius, MELANIE FIONA, John Legend, Raphael Saadiq and others who are really working to try and redefine R&B but still stay true to their roots.
I don’t really know why we have people such as Bruno Mars, Adele and other artists that are doing music that is very soulful and people LOVE it so much. Especially Adele! I wonder who keeps buying her album for it to be selling several hundred thousand copies each week! The week that Tyga dropped his album and it sold just over 60K, Adele moved 230K+ copies! Other artists like Estelle, Melanie Fiona, Ledisi, and more that sing R&B just can’t seem to move numbers like that. I don’t really know what it is at the end of the day. I have had so many conversations where people tell me that people like Brandy and Monica are irrelevant because their “time is up and they can’t contribute anything to the musical industry creatively anymore.” I don’t believe that. I believe artists like them and others that desire to sing R&B continue to do so because that’s what they love to do. Check Melanie Fiona for instance… she’s had several interviews, behind the scenes footage, EPKs, and all that stuff where she has spoken on the pressure she’s felt to show more skin, sing about more sex and do music she doesn’t feel resonates with her… but through her sticking to what she loves to do, she won not one but TWO GRAMMY AWARDS this past February! I think that as long as artists continue to do what they are doing for the right reasons then they will reap the benefits eventually.
I love R&B forever!
Now… I find TheDream’s commentary to be strangely ironic. And here’s why…
TheDream was one of the recent catalyst for the pop movement. He managed to capitalize on music by reaching back to the funk of Prince, updating his sound with 21st century technology and highly repetitive – and according to his album sales – “catchy” loops. He has made a career in the industry of creating and duplicating the sound. As true in most fads/trends… people go with it for awhile before they start to want something else. Research the genre cycle, and then think about Black music in the past 20 years, and you’ll see that patterns of history are yet again repeating themselves.
The fact of the matter is – the people who buy music, supporting the music via websites, radio stations, and TV shows are apart of a culture of what I call “The Party Kids”. Ain’t nothing wrong with having a good time. If you look at music from a critical standpoint, our music is a soundtrack of our times. To say that we “can’t do it” is highly fallacious. If you find me someone who can sing passionately without the acrobatics and don’t need gimmicks to sell their product, I will show you Soul Music. We – as a consumable AND consuming population – are becoming less concerned about dexterity (runs, riffs, scales extreme highs and lows) — we are much more concerned with relateability… we have to BELIEVE it.
We FORGET also that Adele, Estelle and other ENGLISH artist are learning the art of marketing and promoting a specific type of “AUTHENTICITY” to an audience that will buy – a MIXED audience, both American and EUROPEAN. Most Black American artists are not thinking INTERNATIONAL appeal… most of us haven’t gotten out our own cities or states. No shade to Melanie, but I don’t consider what she does “soul” music. I relegate “Soul” music to the Anthony Hamilton, India.Arie, Jill Scott (even though her’s has gotten really commercial, I still love her!), Musiq, Raphael Saadiq, Marsha Ambrosius (a Pop-Soul though), Dwele, Maxwell, Goapele, and Angie Stone (to name a few)…
FURTHERMORE — Soul and R&B is TWO different TYPES of Black Music that is expressed in to different ways. Before TheDream comes at artists and a genre… he needs to first consider SAYING EXACTLY what he means. It’s okay to criticize the way that a specific genre is going and have substantial credit but it’s totally out of bounds to come at an entire race of people and say that we are incapable of doing a genre.
Doc got that pretty much spot on…
Adele’s cd blew up becuase her voice is incredible and the quality of her songs were MUCH higher than any other R&B record (arguably any record) that year. I really don’t think it has anything to do with ethnicity. In my defense, check out the UK’s latest new chart topper Emelie Sande. Her cd is head and shoulder’s above “Musiq, Raphael Saadiq, Marsha Ambrosius (a Pop-Soul though), Dwele, Goapele, and Angie Stone” in terms of cross-over appeal.
I left out Maxwell because BLACKsummer’snight is F#%&@ng incredible in my opinion! But the cross-over potential isn’t quite there.
Musically The Dream is very talented, but he is clearly not the brightest crayon in the box.