You Say Hipster R&B, I Say Nappy-Headed Pop. Either Way, It’s Offensive.

by Jozen Cummings

Two new projects are sparking a lot of discussion right now about the current state of R&B.; The first is by The Weeknd, a mysterious singer (or group?) who has enjoyed a quick rise to critical-darling status since releasing the free debut album House of Balloons last week. The second is by Frank Ocean, the lone singer in Rap Group of the Moment, Odd Future. Ocean’s album, nostalgia,Ultra, also excellent, also free, came out mere weeks before The Weeknd’s project, so the two acts are getting joined together as poster children for what’s being called a new wave of R&B.; The terms being thrown around to describe this new wave are “hipster R&B;” and — half-jokingly, half-seriously — “PBR&B;.” Some have also pointed to So Far Gone, the emotional rap mixtape (featuring a lot of singing!) by Drake, released in 2009, as a major influencer, an initiator of sorts, to this new sound.

I’ve listened to both albums, and both are excellent. I enjoy the irony behind The Weeknd’s high-pitched crooning of hard lyrics on “Wicked Games” (“Let me see that aaaaasssss!/Look at all this cash!”) à la Nate Dogg. Ocean’s nostalgia.Ultra offers a lesson in keeping it real as, on a song like “Novacane,” he sings about falling for a college girl with a “stripper booty” who makes extra money “for tuition doin’ porn in the Valley.” But through my countless listens to both albums, there’s one thing I’m not hearing — R&B.; Not even the hipster variety.

It’s not so much that the term “hipster R&B;” is inaccurate. I’m no hipster, but if The Weeknd and Frank Ocean are getting mad love from people who consider themselves hipsters, then I suppose hipsters can call it whatever makes them feel comfortable. But as non-hipsters like to say, let’s keep it all the way real. Calling it “hipster R&B;” is a nice way of saying it’s R&B; that white people like (black hipsters notwithstanding), and here’s my problem with that: It’s myopic, lazy, and it sounds to me like a form of musical segregation that’s not entirely based on genre.

Here’s a proposal — how about we call it “nappy-headed pop”? If that sounds even slightly politically incorrect or lazy, then you understand my frustrations with the term “hipster R&B.;” It’s not with the term “hipster”; it’s with any hipster or white critic labeling a black artist “an R&B; artist” just because he or she sings a little.

On nostalgia,Ultra Ocean does his own version of The Eagles’ “Hotel California” (“American Wedding”) and MGMT’s “Electric Feel” (“Nature Feels”). House of Balloons lifts a huge sampling of “Happy House” by Siousxie and The Banshees and samples indie rock group Beach House not once, but twice (“Loft Music” and “The Party & The After Party”)! Call me close-minded, but samplings like this don’t sound like R&B.; They don’t pass the hearing test. They sound like black artists who are playing with rock and pop, just as white artists like Esthero and Francis and The Lights (a collaborator on Drake’s Thank Me Later album) do, and you don’t see anyone calling those two artists R&B; in any form.

Of course, R&B; should be allowed to evolve. Not everything needs to sound like an extension of the Motown and Stax tree or like it belongs on Quiet Storm radio formats. I’d even go so far as to say The Weeknd’s album has shades of early Timbaland and Prince, two artists who changed the way R&B; sounded forever. Go back and listen to So Far Gone and listen to Drake’s ode to Timbaland entitled, “Bria’s Interlude,” a reworking of “Friendly Skies,” an R&B; duet Timbaland produced for Missy Elliott and Ginuwine from Elliott’s debut album, Supa Dupa Fly. R&B; as a genre has evolved over the years, no question, but the artists we associate with R&B; evolved as well, sometimes moving beyond the genre with which they were first associated.

Chris Brown’s new album F.A.M.E. is a prime example of this evolution. Listen closely: Are we really listening to R&B; or are we listening to pop? Different ears, different opinions, I’m sure; but if we can’t all agree on it being R&B;, then why would we categorize it as R&B; or compare it to other R&B; albums in the first place? My guess, probably because he’s black. But I’ll be damned if CB’s “Beautiful People” is an R&B; song (it’s dance music) or “Look At Me Now” is R&B; (it’s a rap song with moments of melody). Are we really going to debate who has the better R&B; album between Chris Brown’s F.A.M.E. and Adele’s 21? I don’t think we should, simply because one album is not R&B; (F.A.M.E.) and one album is (21).

All this automatic categorization of black artists who sing harkens back to the social roots of the R&B; genre. Before R&B; was even called R&B;, the record industry and magazines like Billboard categorized it as “race music,” shorthand for any black artists who sang with a backbeat behind them. For years, white artists who made similar music never had to worry about being designated as “race music” until 1958, when Billboard began using “R&B;” instead. The switch made it possible for acts like the late, great Teena Marie and current artists like Robin Thicke to chart in the R&B; category. Unfortunately, many critics still referred (and refer) to those artists with the term “blue-eyed soul,” which is a nice way of saying they’re white singers that black people like. Equally hackneyed is calling black singers who white people like “hipster R&B;” — or, for that matter, “nappy-headed pop”.

None of this is to say critics quick to describe Chris Brown or The Weeknd as R&B; (or hipster R&B;) artists are racists; hardly the case. (Disclosure: I used to work at VIBE alongside Sean Fennessey who authored the Village Voice piece about Frank Ocean, The Weeknd, and where I first read the term “hipster R&B;,” and who I consider a straight-up great guy.) But what I am urging is that we not be so quick to categorize all black singers as R&B; — because what starts to happen then is we cut off the opportunity to have a real discussion about R&B; as a genre.

The Weeknd, Frank Ocean, Chris Brown and Drake are not the only things cooking in R&B; and the way they are being used as some sort of encapsulation of the whole genre is sad. On April 5, the timeless R&B; band Mint Condition will release their new album 7…. I’ve listened to it and it’s great. Meanwhile, the singer Lloyd, who has a respectable track record of releasing good material, will be coming out with his fourth album King of Hearts on April 19. Raphael Saadiq, he of the once-popular-but-no-longer-together R&B; group Tony, Toni, Tone, is releasing his new solo album Stone Rollin’ on May 10. And yes, Adele’s 21 is arguably the best R&B; album released in 2011 thus far.

If we want to have a real discussion about R&B; — where it’s at, where it’s going, who is doing it right, who is doing it weird, and who is really not doing it at all no matter what the critics say — let’s talk about all of these artists. There are some really good white artists making R&B; (Adele) and there are some really good black artists who are not making R&B.; Even The Weeknd himself tweeted, “The Weeknd is not a group, a band, or an R&B; duo act…” Sure, he was tweeting about his personnel, but I also get the feeling he wanted to make it clear his music is not R&B.; Let’s listen to the music carefully, place the albums in their proper categories (if you’re even into that sort of thing), and then discuss based on what we hear, not what we see.

Jozen Cummings is a writer living in Harlem whose work has appeared in Vibe, The New York Times Magazine, Paper and various other places. You can check out his blog Until I Get Married or follow him on Twitter.

It is probably sound advice, but the background music on this advisory from the New Hampshire Fish and Game department has me looking over my shoulder for the bear I know is hiding back there in the shadows, just waiting to pounce.

Orthodox Birtherism vs. Reform Birtherism: David Weigel parses two different kinds of crazy.

by Seth Colter Walls

Mary HK Choi: Hi Seth! How are you feeling today?

Seth Colter Walls: both within and without the state of being connected / the Internet makes me feel online

Mary: Of course this is where you begin. I’d have started with the Saint Joseph Domaine Laurent Betton with the peppery finish that we murdered last night at Bar Boulud.

Seth: Oh sorry, HK, my mind is still a touch scrambled from the last of the three short “operas” we saw last night. As you know, the libretto for the last one was written by Samuel Beckett. The rhythms are still a bit in my head. But let’s start at the beginning.

Seth: As everyone has been properly notified, City Opera is currently presenting a night of three short, modern one-act operas, which are being rubric’ed under the heading of “Monodramas” — on account of how there is only one singer per piece. (All sopranos, as it happens.) You can read several quite favorable standard-issue operatic reviews in the Times and in the Post (and in another town’s Post) if you’d like — though what follows will be more of a user-experience conversation for the non-specialist.

Mary: And I went in totally cold. I do not have the recordings, LIKE YOU DO.

Seth: Truth — or at least for the two that HAVE been been recorded. And so here is the point where we say the titles and composers. First off was John Zorn’s “La Machine de l’etre” (The Machine of Being), written in 2000, and which was 10 minutes long, only. Plotless. Also: wordless. Just emotive sounds from the soprano over a gnarly orchestra. And it’s meant to be based, somehow, on the late drawings of Antonin Artaud.

Mary: Very KTHXBAI. And it was just a GANG of burqua’d ladies.

Seth: Right. At beginning of this piece, dozens upon dozens of people on stage were in burquas. And the two kind of mannequin-ish actors, dressed up in tuxy-duds, who served as our “guides” to all three works and who stood out in front of the curtain before the lights went down…

Mary: They looked like they were in some sort of synth band!

Seth: Yes, they were very Crystal Sleigh Pink Nothings…

Mary: Yeah, the super hot lady one with bangs and 5″ patent leather heels. And the dude.

Seth: Right. He’s always going to be called “the dude,” when standing next to her.

Mary: And they went around undressing everyone: the soprano, a man in a scarlet suit… before the music even started.

Seth: The whole thing played very much like performance art? But they also gave some odd “structure” to the the night’s disparate pieces.

Mary: The thing about the whole performance art bit was that at times it was almost like a comedy skit — poking fun of EXACTLY something like that. BUT it was all too well done and strangely pleasing in other respects.

Seth: Yes, the audience was supposed to laugh a bit, at the beginning and in-between the pieces. Some slight comic relief amid all the keening, angsty abstraction of the modernist musics.

Mary: The audience laughed because they played so much with the planes of interest. Like the focal points altering jarringly from the projected artwork to the background to the sherpas who move around on the foreground. You laughed because moments were absurd.

Seth: TONS of data to process. Here’s also where we describe more concretely to people that one of the burqa’d ladies in the Zorn piece had a huge thought-bubble screen above her head, onto which animations based on Artaud’s work were projected.

Mary: Some of the women in burquas looked like nuns, though, when they were skittering about. And the drawings looked like aboriginal boobies.

Seth: And penises… which is why I thought the burqua/nun thing was interesting. And also why the whole conceit of “dressing/undressing” the participants before the first two operas was key. Just the notion of the sheathed self versus the revealed/vulnerable self being the emotional nexus between these works that are otherwise quite dissimilar. And and the reason that we don’t get any dressing/undressing in the third act is because the MIND/PERSONA IS UNKNOWABLE TO ITSELF, hullo Beckett!

Mary: Hmm… the thing is some of the burqua’dnuns had mad personality while totally covered. BUT you know that’s funny you say that, about vulnerability, it’s like all the nuns were space aliens, right? And the audience is an invading space ship, and we’re way more powerful than them.

Seth: Uh…?

Mary: And the undressed singing lady head nun or den mother or whatever looked panicked! Like she was making up excuses to us, to protect all the other nuns who were helpless

Seth: Yes, she was gesturing to the animations, to the crazy penises and boobs projected into their speech bubbles, as if to explain their essential legitimacy to us as thoughts.

Mary: But she was also the only one really looking at us. There was something very beseeching about it. Like she was asking us to spare them

Seth: And explain their brains to us.

Mary: It was a weird feeling, and none of us were getting it.

Seth: Which, obviously, was why it was wordless

Mary: RIGHT.

Seth: How cool was the fire at the end?

Mary: It was gonzo. Right so there was a huge speech bubble that they showed the animation on, and then they set it on fire. OR rather, it went up in flames. And it was SO FUCKING BRIGHT.

Seth: How do they make fire so bright that you have to close your eyes, even from that distance? And don’t forget the other dude in the red suit also had a competing thought bubble, but his went away and then he was vacummed up into the ceiling. AS ONE DOES in this show. So much flying.

Mary: I was worried for their lumbar support. But I also loved it. Also we forgot the lingerie lady with the t-straps.

Seth: She had a super-kinetic and disjointed dance.

Mary: YES, broken doll club dance w/splayed hands and good hair movement.

Seth: This all happened in 10 minutes!

Mary: It was crazed.

Seth: Correct. And then there was a brief multimedia interlude that came before Arnold Schoenberg’s “Erwartung” (Expectation, or Anticipation, or Waiting — people do fight over this), from 1909 — which in some ways was the most straightforward, most “plotted” thing of the night. In brief: a woman in the woods is looking for her lover, who is late to meet her.

Mary: A total wackjob woman, btw. I mean she is basically straight up making out with a dead man.

Seth: She comes across a dead body (it’s him!) and mistakes it for a tree trunk at first. Later she realizes he’s dead, but then keeps wondering about the “other woman” homeboy had been seeing of late.

Mary: That’s what made her totally nuts! Well, you know I felt deeply for the animated interstitials, because they felt good on my brain and as though I was DUMB high on very good marijuana. AND reminded me of the BEST kenzo floral prints from the 70s.

Seth: That was video art of the seasons changing in the woods, courtesy of Jennifer Steinkamp. Thought it was a bit long. But it was a nice way to disguise the need to have a 5-minute set change after the Zorn piece.

Mary: What did YOU think of the second one?

Seth: I thought it was the least successful staging of the night. Like all the stage business revealed the director’s lack of trust regarding what actually happens in the piece.

Mary: So she sees her dead lover, is maaaaaybe making out with him the whole time, and talking to him about how sad she is, and how desperately she loved him.

Seth: After killing him and forgetting it.

Mary: And THEN she gets PISSED! Because she DECIDES he was having an affair with some chick with “white arms.” I also noticed this was the production with an Asian lady in it.

Seth: Meantime: so many rose petals falling onto the stage from above.

Mary: Gorgeous rose petals.

Seth: Too many?

Mary: Yes. And then we think maybe she killed him. BUT also I really like their little empire waist dresses, with the pretty little balloon cap sleeves, AND there was a super pretty doll house in that one too. OK so let’s get to your favorite, the LAST ONE.

Seth: Morton Feldman’s NEITHER!

Mary: The #disco one.

Seth: Describe the set?

Mary: It looked like the walls were covered in fish scales

Seth: I feel like this was opera as it would be staged at Club Silencio from Mullholland Drive?

Mary: Without a doubt. I LOVED the disco balls that were just spinning mirrored boxes.

Seth: Very General Zod. And also they reflected this refracted pinwheel morph-zone of intense colordrom, right?

Mary: YES. The reflections off them shits were really uncomfortable in a way I liked.

Seth: But viz a viz the sheathing and unsheathing of the women in the first two, there was no getting INSIDE the woman in the final piece.

Mary: Oh none. We were in it, but there was no inside to be had.

Seth: The boxes spinning all around her were the antithesis of the doll house (look inside), and the animations (look inside my head).

Mary: YES. I mean, it starts off elegant and beautiful … and then…

Seth: A bit disturbed and keening and repetitive, but rhythmically varied. And sometimes very softly played. To the point where when a new phrase or momentum was created out of the pointalistically realized orchestration… your hair was just blown back.

Mary: And the words!

Seth: “to and fro in shadow from inner to outer shadow / from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself by way of neither”

Mary: Bro: “UNSPEAKABLE HOME”!

Seth: The final words!

Mary: By then, you’re like, WERD. CHURCH.

Seth: One other moment? When once of the dancer woman is trying to hold onto the man who is flying away, and she’s holding onto his shoes?

Mary: Very no strings attached/*NSYNC (not Portman-Kutcher).

Seth: LOLLL … anyway, it reminded me of the protagonist in opera number 2 holding onto the dead body that had weirdly risen, undead-like, at the end.

Mary: YES.

Seth: I thought it was a nice callback, just as the boxes that were animated in the first piece were the disco boxes in the last piece. I think the director, Michael Counts, did a great job “tying” together these pieces thematically without putting too much of a BUTTON on the whole deal.

Mary: Agreed. Man those disco boxes were crazy feeling on the brain. But that’s the thing. That piece JUST ENDED. It was like being sprung form a sensory deprivation tank into times square. What did we call it?

Seth: That you are refreshed, but also kind of dazed that you elected to sleep with all the lights on and windows open.

Mary: And slightly headachey.

Seth: And still in your SKINNY JEANS.

Mary: And needing to pee. BUT, in a good way that you should pay money to go do.

Seth: $12 tickets and $25 tickets remain for all the remaining presentations of “Monodramas” — which is cheaper than all the things we ate and drank afterward. Otherwise: did the music ever become beautiful to you? Or did it stay space alien-y the whole time?

Mary: It was beautiful the whole time, and space alieny the whole time

Seth: DUALITY, BITCHES. Also, parts of this night contained some of the most exciting opera-making I have seen on any NYC stage this season.

Mary: It was uncomfortably beautiful — and draws you into its crazy immediately. It’s like a really hot crying chick.

Seth: Again: LYNCH.

Mary: VERY VERY LYNCH. Importantly so.

Seth: I wonder what we’ll see next?

Mary: First we have to go to our jobs again, though.

[EXUENT ALL, TO MEETINGS]

Seth Colter Walls and Mary HK Choi are a mite sluggish today.

by Abe Sauer

After the state chapter of the Republican Party made a massive open records request to (admittedly) intimidate University of Wisconsin professor Bill Cronon, things just got nuts.

Today the Republican Party of Dane County released an “apology” to Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi regarding her restraining order on the enactment of the budget bill pending a court hearing. The apology followed a March 29th statement from the Republican Party criticizing Sumi’s decision.

It’s a jaw-dropping demonstration of stereotype and petulance and it’s below, as it might not be on the Party’s website for long.

RPDC Apologizes To Judge Sumi

The Republican Party of Dane County sent out a press release on March 29th criticizing Judge Maryann Sumi for holding up the publication of Governor Scott Walker’s collective bargaining reform bill. Upon further reflection we’d like to apologize for not understanding her point of view.

Sure, Governor Walker’s bill is unquestionably constitutional, increases worker’s rights and helps local government balance budgets without having to fire public workers. The Wisconsin state legislature consulted with their non-partisan parliamentarian to make sure that the passage of the bill followed the rules of the Senate and Assembly. But this isn’t about the law, is it?

The Republican Party of Dane County recognizes that Judge Sumi is a leftist living in Dane County. Her friends are leftists living in Dane County. Her son is a left wing activist in Dane County. She goes to cocktail parties held by leftists in Dane County. She shops at organic gourmet food shops run by leftists living in Dane County. If she were to enforce the law of Wisconsin and do what was in the best interest of the people of Wisconsin, she’d be exiled from her lifestyle. She’d lose her friends!

The leadership of the Republican Party of Dane County have all made the choice to stand against the Dane County elite. We accept that Left feels righteous vandalizing our homes and keying our cars. It’s only fair. We disagree based upon logic and principle. That is intolerable! We prioritize the Constitution and the well being of the people of Wisconsin over foie gras at cocktail parties. That’s the choice we made. We respect Judge Sumi’s decision to live her life with the rich diversity that liberals cherish.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Dane County GOP will be here all week. Tip your waitresses and try the veal.

The Cap Times reaches the Dane County GOP’s Jeff Waksman who shockingly does not explain the website was hacked by Anonymous or something and instead gladly takes credit, pointing out that “Madison is a very intimidating and stifling intellectual environment.” It seems Waksman “moved to Madison six years ago from the New York city area” and…

“You walk down State Street, and every store has a sign that if you support the bill you hate teachers or children,” he says. “So people can’t even walk into the stores without being afraid and wondering, is this person going to even give me good service?”

Waksman works for, yes, UW-Madison.

But wait, it gets better. In 2009, Waksman wrote a letter to the editor on behalf of the Republican Party which was at that time “offended and outraged by a slanderous attack” from comments by Dane Co. Supervisor Brett Hulsey about the “tea bag, anti-RTA, anti-Obama crowd.” Waksman went on to say that such “rhetoric has no place in our political discourse” and that “Hulsey should immediately apologize.”

It should also be noted that Judge Sumi was appointed in 1998 by Republican Tommy Thompson, a former governor who, Walker said in his February budget address, “brought into office bold new ideas and strong leadership.”

Congratulations Wisconsin, if the battle over Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill was not yet officially a satirical farce, it is now.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.

Awl pal Doree Shafrir reflects on James Salter’s “Last Night.” (Those of you unfamiliar with the short story should probably read it first, because of the spoilers.)

“If your clean, washed hands touch anything before they’re dry, they can pick up new germs from the touched surface, for example the button on the forced-air dryer or the dial of a rotary dispenser. Picking up new germs may compromise the entire hand-washing exercise. Here’s how to avoid this problem: With a rotary dispenser, dial a towel before you wash your hands, then rip it from the dispenser afterward. And what about the button on the forced-air dryer? Well, that’s what elbows are for!”

Fair enough. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DOOR HANDLE ON THE WAY OUT?

Photo by dasmart, from Flickr.

The level of despair you attach to each of the images within will depend on your own psychological condition, but Awl pal Sloane Crosley and friends will certainly give you something to cry about.

“In the first study they found that twice as many mall shoppers who had just ridden an up escalator contributed to the Salvation Army than shoppers who had just ridden the down escalator … In a final study, participants watched film clips of scenes taken from an airplane above the clouds, or through the window of a passenger car. Participants who had watched the clip of flying up above the clouds were 50 percent more cooperative in a computer game than those who had watched the car ride down on the ground. Overall these studies show remarkable consistency, linking height and different prosocial behaviors — i.e., donations, volunteering, compassion, and cooperation.”
 — Please stand up. Step up on your chair (careful if it’s a swivel chair — that’s very dangerous!) Look down at your computer screen. Now, will you please send me a thousand dollars? Scientists at the University of Carolina seem to have proven a strong connection between elevation and generosity. Amazing! Here are some embedded YouTube videos to illustrate the concept.

Perhaps you want to stay indoors tomorrow: “A pre-April Fool’s day storm that could sock the city with an inch of snow — even though it’s officially spring — is heading our way, the National Weather Service says.”