Balloon Party
January 23, 2012 4 comments
I must admit that I don’t listen to much R&B music anymore. I still enjoy most of the quality, classic R&B albums I have in the stash but it’s harder and harder for me to find good R&B music these days. There’s a fine line between good R&B and “grown & sexy” and I like to stray away from the grown and sexy end of the spectrum. Acts like Algebra, Dwele, Ledisi, Eric Roberson, and Kem among others are always out of my grasp in that I recognize their talent but just find it hard to get into their music. I want to enjoy some easy breezy R&B without all of the grown up anecdotes about the hardships of love. I just want to drive with this playing in the background, not attend audio therapy sessions.
My R&B collection is a pretty nice mix, considering the ignorant trap rap music that I sometimes listen to. You might catch me listening to anything from Lyfe Jennings, to Ginuwine, to Tank, to Ryan Leslie, to Craig David, to Bilal, to Maxwell, to the Pied Piper of R&B himself. I need a late pass for discovering the catalog of Musiq Soulchild after the fact but that man has yet to put forward an incorrect step musically. Another of my top choices is the King of Pop himself; Mr. Michael Jackson. When it comes to being an entertainer no one is up there with MJ and no one will ever be as close to what he did. Usher and Chris Brown were both great dancers but neither is able to do what MJ does from a songwriting/songmaking standpoint. MJ doesn’t need infidelity to inspire his best music.
In terms of new artists, my favorite R&B act by far has to be The Weeknd. The Weeknd is a singer out of Toronto that actually dropped 3 entirely new projects last year and each was of very high quality. In this day and age of artists who release music with all the frequency of 109 yard missed field goal returns that was quite a pleasant surprise to my ears. I must admit I was thrown for a loop due to the graphic nature of most of The Weekend’s music but his voice is simply angelic and cannot be overlooked. The music is so good it’s undeniable.
The Weekend’s latest project “Echoes of Silence” begins with a cover of Michael Jackson’s song “Dirty Diana.” After listening to the first couple minutes of the song I realized how similar The Weeknd’s voice was to MJs. A lot of people look at MJ as an all-around entertainer but that takes away from his great singing voice and knack for melodies. Throughout the course of “Echoes of Silence” I began to notice more and more just how much The Weeknd owes his sonic style to Michael Jackson. From the adlibs to the moans and grunts to the “baby’s” The Weeknd is what I envision Michael Jackson would sound like if he had Drake and Juicy J on his records.
To me, a lot of what The Weeknd sings about is simply for shock value purposes. He couldn’t rely on his talent or voice alone; he felt the need to make himself stand even further out from the pack of other R&B singers. We live in a world where people watch unmarried women on a show called “Basketball Wives” so there isn’t much that puts people off. In order to create this distance between his music and others in the genre, he chose to make a trilogy of albums about heavy drug use, promiscuous sex and the regrets and emotions that arise from each. The trilogy of albums takes you on the rise and fall of this musical binge, only to leave you craving for more at the end. The ability to paint pictures and vivid imagery in his lyrics and storytelling is something I rarely see from R&B singers and that’s what draws me to his music more than anything else.
‘I can’t help but think of how some of these songs by The Weeknd are simply natural, darker progressions of music Michael Jackson would have been making in 2011-2012. It’s like The Weeknd is the Wario to Michael Jackson’s Mario.’
I can’t help but think of how some of these songs by The Weeknd are simply natural, darker progressions of music Michael Jackson would have been making in 2011-2012. It’s like The Weeknd is the Wario to Michael Jackson’s Mario. “High For This,” a tale of being there for a woman in her most vulnerable of times, is like a more sinister version of “You Are Not Alone”. The horror of “Thriller,” a song about being surrounded by going into unknown territory surrounded by what seems like evil, is replicated in the drug overtones of “House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls.”
The way The Weeknd woos a debutante he is courting on “Lonely Star” is similar to MJ’s “PYT.” The introspection of “Man In The Mirror” is recreated in the vulnerability shown on the song “Rolling Stone.” The somberness of “She’s Out of My Life” is repurposed centering around exotic dancers and other girls “you won’t be seeing in the morning” in “The Morning.” MJ was dealing with unwanted advances on “Billie Jean,” and that comes back to life in The Weeknd’s “Next,” a tale about a woman trying to use his fame for selfish reasons. Similar song themes just with a unique perspective telling the story this time around.
In 2012 we may get music from The Weeknd that ditches the drug overtones and misogyny of some of his previous work. From “D.D.” it’s obvious that he has the vocal chops required to make standard pop music. The alliance with Drake will also inevitably push him towards the mainstream realm. But I feel very confident about the future of R&B music knowing that The Weeknd has the quantity and quality of output this past year and most artists work entire careers for. The future is very bright for that young man.
