Sometime a few weeks ago, in the middle of this supposedly Song-of-the-Summer-less summer, I realized that I was swimming in music that I adored. It happens regularly that I feel like I’ll go months without being excited about anything musically and then bam!, I’m overwhelmed with good stuff.
Trey Songz is perhaps the goofiest contemporary R&B singer people take seriously. He once wrote a song about emoticons called “LOL :-)” and another about inventing sex called “I Invented Sex,” a claim that was has yet to be verified by an independent governing body. But today he might have revealed his most absurd…
Last week, Mariah Carey released her 14th studio album, Me. I Am Mariah…The Elusive Chanteuse. Here are some things to consider when considering Mariah Carey, especially at this juncture in her 24-year career.
Over the past month, I've watched several people freak out when I've mentioned 19-year-old Chicago singer/rapper Tink's recent song "Don't Tell Nobody." The duet with Jeremih ("Birthday Sex") is compulsively listenable. It's intricately laid out melodrama told in the filthiest of terms. Switching meter nearly every…
In the Vlad TV interview above, rapper turned singing AutoTune addict T-Pain calls homophobia "terrible" and "weird," says he doesn't "fuck with" people who shun gays, and claims to know artists who won't work with Frank Ocean because he once wrote a Tumblr post about falling in love with a man. Throughout, T-Pain is…
Whatever Justin Timberlake had, musically, he's lost—at least for now, if his excruciating The 20/20 Experience – 2 of 2 is an indication. Some critics who stretched to defend the uninspired first half of this unpleasant "experience" earlier this year can't even muster a pro argument for this collection of outtakes of…
For a long time I've thought that the most hip-hop thing about Mary J. Blige's landmark 1992 album What's the 411? wasn't the at-the-time-unheard incorporation of boom-bap breaks into a sung R&B context, but Blige's cover Rufus & Chaka Khan's "Sweet Thing." A 21-year-old with a flat voice, a honking tone, and less…
If this week’s deluge of new R&B releases were dining experiences, John Legend’s fourth album, Love in the Future, would be a sort of traditional Italian, white-table-cloth, ancient-waiter affair. Tamar Braxton’s Love and War, meanwhile, would be more like a visit to Olive Garden – its charm is in its tacky populism.…
VH1 has released the first footage of its upcoming biopic CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story. It is mostly recreations of music videos and it is mostly convincing. Lil Mama seems particularly spot-on as Left Eye. Who knew?
Erykah Badu has mastered the modern art of giving interview. A mixture of wit and earnestness, of insight and leftfield references, hers is the kind of rare personality that should earn an open invitation to the talk-show circuit regardless of promo and just 'cuz, a la Amy Sedaris on Letterman. Badu is cool to death,…
Your enjoyment of the fifth album from Terius Nash, the R&B singer songwriter better known as The-Dream, will probably depend on your appetite for directness. Do you enjoy when people comment publicly on your privates? Do you strip down to nothing even before foreplay? Do you like to hear or say come-ons like, "And we…
Just when you thought Chris Brown couldn't get worse, he announced his upcoming single will feature unheard Aaliyah vocals. Aaliyah has been dead for over 11 years. She has been resting less peacefully lately.
Chris Brown wants you to know that he is a passionate, positive, self-actualizing young man. In a series of in-studio interviews he arranged in advance of his upcoming single, he sold this nice-guy image hard.
On last night's Unsung, TV One's Behind the Music for R&B and hip-hop acts that never quite crossed over into pop megastardom, New Edition's Johnny Gill discussed his life and career. The show regularly examines gay rumors that its subjects have faced (Freddie Jackson and EPMD's Erick Sermon both denied such rumors on…
Beyoncé is so cute when she gets angry: If the art accompanying her new song(s) "Bow Down / I Been On" is any indication, she looks like her prepubescent pageant-girl self Photoshopped onto a picture of her old living room/trophy display area. That's only the first indication the weirdness of the release, which came …
Justin Timberlake's third album, The 20/20 Experience, would be a disappointment were we not adequately prepared to be underwhelmed. This is the kind of album whose mellow, nothing-more-than-nice first single is puzzling until you hear the rest of the album and realize that it's the most commercial pop on a collection…
To hear others tell it, Woman, the acclaimed debut album from L.A.-based sleepy pop duo Rhye, is the perfect choice for sex music. "Woman is bound to become fodder for a tasteful boudoir soundtrack," says Pitchfork. "The kind of album that can only be made in the feverish early stages of all-consuming eroticism and…
Ciara's "Body Party," the umpteenth effort to launch the singer's upcoming One Woman Army album, is something sex jams by people other than Prince and R. Kelly rarely are: legitimately clever in concept. Based on a sample of the opening of beloved 1996 bass anthem "My Boo," "Body Party" achieves an extremely modern…
"Attracting Flies" is another brilliant single from British R&B future-retroists AlunaGeorge. With each track (including my favorite single of 2012, "Your Drums, Your Love"), they hone their craft of sounding simultaneously familiar (like from the early '90s) and alien. It's true for their production and their lyrics,…
Justin Timberlake performed "Mirrors" from his upcoming 20/20 Experience album at last night's BRIT Awards in London. When that track was released after the Grammy Awards, it seemed like an energizing, skittery return to FutureSex/LoveSounds Justin. In the live context, it was just as dull as his R. Kelly-lite Grammys…
