here's a great trio of articles on the current state of r&b music and how it all came to be. please see links for entire article.

Rhythm and Bull_shit?: The Slow Decline of R&B, Part One: Rhythm & Business, Cultural Imperialism and the Harvard Report

by Mark Anthony Neal

Yeah, I'm nostalgic: When Mary J. Blige first uttered the opening lines to "You Remind Me," it was about making sure that hip-hop remembered that R&B came from the same streets where crackheads roamed and the same tenement vestibules where drama went down on the regular. But as I listen to Mario's "Let Me Love You" for the 727th time, it is perhaps easy to suggest that R&B has lost its Soul, or that Clear Channel, Radio One (luv ya, Cathy!), AOL-Time Warner and Viacom -- a neo-plantation cabal if ever there was one -- ripped its heart out. Hip-hop may have sold out, but at least it has sold out on its own terms. R&B, on the other hand, has sold out on somebody else's, on a pop-chart paper chase. Truth be told, U(r)sher was nothing more than a soon-past-his-peak R&B singer before John Smith laced him with some crunk junk; Ray J could have sang the hook on "Yeah" and topped the pop charts. And now, 10 million units later, we want to act like Mr. Raymond is the second coming of Michael Jackson? I ain't willing to grant him the second coming of Bobby Brown. And it is not like we even knew Mr. Legend (in his own mind) and Ms. Queen of Crunk n' B were in the room, until some hip-hop act sanctioned their presence. But what ails contemporary R&B is not just a matter of the commercial success of John Legend -- and Amerie and Ciara and Mario. The current state of R&B comes not from a sudden decline, but a process more than 30 years in the making.

Does the soulless sound of contemporary R&B really have its roots in a controversial Harvard study from 1972, an alleged blueprint for the corporate theft of black culture's heritage? Or was it all Clive Davis's idea? The first of a three-part examination of how R&B became big business on the way to becoming irrelevant.

This story begins in 1972, when a few enterprising master's students at the Harvard Business School prepared a study, commissioned by one of Columbia's execs, detailing how the Columbia Records Group could better integrate the then largely independent black music industry into the mix. The now infamous Harvard Report -- officially known as "A Study of the Soul Music Environment" -- has often been referred to as a sinister blueprint aimed at arming a litany of "culture bandits" with the theoretical tools to return black culture to a neo-colonial state. There's no denying that this is exactly the situation we're staring at now, but it has nothing to do with the Harvard Report. What those MBA students articulated was a no-brainer marketing plan, informed by the commercial success of Motown and the cynical (though not mistaken) view that the Civil Rights "revolution" likely had more to do with the realities that black folk had disposable income and white folk consumed a **** of a lot of black popular culture than anything to do with real structural change in American society. In response to those expecting more sinister designs in the Harvard Report, David Sanjek rhetorically chimes, "why did [Columbia] feel the need to document what they should have already known?" ( Rhythm and Business, 62). What Sanjek suggests is that eventually somebody in the music industry would have come up with their own version of the Harvard Report -- say, Clive Davis, who incidentally was a president at Columbia at the time that the report was commissioned. The point is, with or without the Harvard Report, the takeover was well underway.

Black music has always had a complicated relationship with big business. That this relationship has typically had little to do with actual music perhaps explains the often unbalanced quality of this thing we've come to call R&B. This complicated relationship also partly explains what exactly R&B is. The term R&B is essentially a shortened version of "Rhythm & Blues", but as a novice might discern, that which is called R&B bears little resemblance to the musical landscape created by Ruth Brown, Louis Jordan, Laverne Baker, Charles Brown and the Coasters. And perhaps that was the point. Musical innovations aside, R&B was essentially a marketing ploy that finally gained a significant foothold during the late 1970s. R&B was born out of competing logics -- record companies tried to negotiate the realities of black culture and identity within the history of race relations in America while trying at the same time to reach a wider audience of black consumers and white record buyers. As black radio needed mainstream advertisers to court the emerging black middle class (as much an ideology as a measurement of economic and social status) and mainstream record labels became fixated on crossing over black artists to white consumers, terms like Soul and Rhythm and Blues quickly became too black. The same terminology turnover occurred during the late 1970s when urban began to stand for radio stations that essentially programmed black music. As Nelson George explains, "Urban was supposedly a multicolored programming style tuned to the rhythms of America's crossfertilized big cities…. But more often, urban was black radio in disguise." ( The Death of Rhythm and Blues, 159).

Entire Article: popmatters.com

Rhythm and Bull_shit?: The Slow Decline of R&B, Part Two: New Jack Swing, Mary J. Blige and the Coming Hegemony of Hip-Hop

In the 1990s, hip-hop and R&B cross-pollinated to create the crossover sound of hip-hop soul and conquer urban radio. But was anybody keeping it real?

by Mark Anthony Neal

As ubiquitous as it is today, as recently as 15 years ago hip-hop faced a real battle just to be heard on urban radio. Like Soul and Rhythm and Blues before it, hip-hop was too publicly black for advertisers, and when it found its way on the playlists of big market urban radio it was often after-hours on the weekend. There were a few exceptions -- Whodini, for example, doesn't get enough credit for their melding of hip-hop and R&B (courtesy of Larry Smith) on tracks like "Friends", "Funky Beat" and in particular "One Love", a strategy that Heavy D and the Boyz later exploited to become a radio-friendly favorite. The success of Jody Whatley's collaboration with Rakim, "Friends" (1989), made some R&B artists and labels more willing to rent-a-rapper for some street credibility, but at the same time, it was still common practice for labels to deliver to radio versions of R&B singles in "rap" and "no rap" mixes to maximize radio airplay. Ultimately it took the sound christened the "new jack swing" to bring record labels and urban radio on board with the changing dynamics of R&B.

Teddy Riley is generally recognized as the genius behind new jack swing, a sound that married the old-school harmonies of the black church with a hard rhythmic edge. Riley's group Guy (originally featuring Aaron Hall and Timmy Gatling) was the primary vehicle for his production, but he also produced Johnny Kemp ("Just Got Paid"), Keith Sweat ("I Want Her"), James Ingram ("I'm Real"), Boy George ("Don't Take My Mind on a Trip"), the Winans ("It's Time") and Michael Jackson ("Remember the Time"). The range of artists that Riley worked with gives some indication of new jack swing's impact on the recording industry.

Riley might have been the true innovator of the swing, but Bobby Brown gave it its public face. Bobby Brown was the first true embodiment of hip-hop in the R&B world, even daring to drop a rhyme or two himself, like a low-rent LL Cool J. Many folk looked askance a few years ago when Whitney Houston referred to her husband as the "king of R&B", but the reality is that Brown's breakthrough recording, 1988's Don't Be Cruel, is singularly responsible for the trajectory of R&B well into the 1990s. It is virtually impossible to imagine the careers of R. Kelly, Dave Hollister, Jaheim, Joe, Avant, Usher and Justin Timberlake without the success of Don't Be Cruel, which produced five bonafide R&B and pop hits, including "Every Little Step", "Rock Wit'cha" and, of course, "My Prerogative", produced by Riley.

In a 1988 New York Times feature on Brown, Peter Watrous was prophetic when he suggested that Brown's "success could have important implications.... If [his] achievement is followed by the deserved success of others, then perhaps the wall, kept sturdy by radio, press and record companies, that has historically divided black and white music worlds will begin to crumble." Behind Watrous's prescient observation was the realization among the major labels that hip-hop possessed real commercial potential beyond urban audiences. The popular view is that the majors got involved with hip-hop in the aftermath of successful crossover releases by Run-DMC ( Raising **** ) and the Beastie Boys ( License to Ill ) and the strong response to MTV's Yo! MTV Raps (1988). While this view may indeed be correct, a more cynical view is that major labels adopted hip-hop once the independent labels that supported it throughout the 1980s became a threat to their hegemony in the field of black music. What was most important was maintaining complete control over the urban contemporary market. If hip-hop happened to crossover -- so the thinking was in the late 1980s -- it would be simply gravy.

By the mid-1990s hip-hop would of course do so much more, eventually becoming one of popular music's dominant genres. But the germ of that success came years earlier via a small boutique label distributed by MCA, the label Brown recorded for. Sean Combs gets much of the credit for carrying hip-hop over the crossover hump, but before Bad Boy Entertainment there was Uptown, the brain-child of former Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde frontman Andre Harrell. In the early 1980s Jekyll and Hyde ('Genius Rap") were known for the business attire they wore on stage while rapping, a look that captured the very aesthetic that Harrell hoped to cultivate with the Uptown label, a style he would call "High Negro", which melded the upscale blackness of R&B (and the yellow-power-tie/Reagan-era generation of niggeratti strivers) with the street. Harrell was not necessarily an innovator; groups like Full Force ("Alice, I Want You Just for Me") and The Force MDs ("Let Me Love You") were already charting this territory. But Harrell had the genius to mass market this sound. Not surprisingly, Heavy D and the Boyz were one of the label's first successes, the group's "We Got Our Own Thing", produced by Riley in 1989, became an anthem for the era of asymmetrical high-top fades, Africa medallions and pastel colors. But Uptown's two signature acts, Jodeci and Mary J. Blige, defined the Uptown sound and the possibilities of a true hip-hop and R&B hybrid.

Entire Article: popmatters.com

Rhythm and Bull_shit?: The Slow Decline of R&B, Part Three: Media Conglomeration, Label Consolidation, and Payola

Throughout the late 1990s, the Clear Channeling of radio and record-label Universalizing left untold numbers of R&B acts undiscovered.

by Mark Anthony Neal

On February 8, 1996, Bill Clinton signed into law the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996. At the same time Jay Z was preparing for the late-spring release of his debut, Reasonable Doubt, unaware that he and many other hip-hop acts were about to benefit from the atmosphere of deregulation and capital accumulation that the new law typified. Reasonable Doubt was released by Roc-A-Fella Records, an independent label founded by Carter, Karreim Biggs and Damon Dash. By 1998 Roc-A-Fella would enter into a joint equity deal with Def Jam, itself a former indie label, founded in 1984 by Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin and later distributed by Sony and Polygram. When Roc-A-Fella and Def Jam agreed to partner, a 40 percent share of the latter was about to be sold to Polygram for $130 million. Shortly thereafter Polygram was bought by Seagram (yes, the liquor company), creating the Universal Music Group, which would later be acquired by the French company Vivendi. At the very moment that Vivendi/Universal (where Jay Z, 50 Cent, The Game and Eminem currently work) was unveiled, Clear Channel could claim ownership of more than 1,200 radio stations -- 247 of them in the top 250 national radio markets. Clear Channel's emergence as the dominant force in commercial radio was directly related to the bill that Clinton signed into law in 1996. Confusing? Of course it is, but imagine how confusing it was -- and still is -- for your local up-and-coming R&B artist who can't find a major label to sign her or a urban radio station that would play her music even if she did.

Arguably the most noticeable of the wide-ranging effects of the Telecommunications Act has been the Clear Channeling of America's public airwaves. Prior to 1996 companies were constrained from owning more than two radio stations in any market and could own no more than 28 nationally. The logic behind this was simple: As the Broad Artist Coalition and the Future of Music Coalition argued in their joint letter to the FCC and Congress in 2002, "radio is a public asset, not private property.... The quid pro quo for free use of the public bandwidth requires that broadcast stations serve the public interest in their local communities." While many radio stations do some form of public-affairs programming -- usually in the early morning hours on the weekend -- serving the public is broader than that. Part of the responsibility of any radio station is to support music that speaks to local tastes. This is one of the ways that local music scenes have developed and been nurtured in the past, whether it was Rhythm and Blues in the Midwest in the early 1960s (which produced Motown and Curtis Mayfield), the Philly Soul of Thom Bell and Gamble and Huff in the 1970s or hip-hop in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1980s.

In the aftermath of the Telecommunications Reform Act, the massive consolidation in radio has left fewer people making the decisions about what music will be played. The ten largest radio conglomerates in the U.S. control more than two thirds of the national radio audience, with Clear Channel and Viacom (which, incidentally, owns both MTV and BET) controlling more than 40 percent of that. That these conditions impact what music you hear on the radio and the ability of local groups to get on their local radio station goes without saying. In the past, for example, if a particular region had 20 radio stations, 20 different program directors (PDs) would likely decided what would be played. In the current environment playlist decisions are now in the hands of a smaller group of PDs, who often cede some of their decision making power to regional and national program directors. Furthermore, as the Future of Music Coalition noted in their 2002 report "Radio Deregulation: Has It Served Citizens and Musicians" , in any given region, the concentration of ownership among a small number of conglomerates is even more intense. The Clear Channeling of radio has homogenized American radio. This is why urban stations in the major markets all sound the same.

The nationalizing of local radio has made it increasingly difficult for listeners in various locales to hold programmers accountable. One of the best examples of these struggles was the protest of New York City's Hot 97 (WQHT-FM), after the station's morning drive-time team performed a racially insensitive parody about the tsunami that destroyed portions of Indonesia and Africa. Though nationwide protest eventually forced the station's parent company, Emmis, to fire a producer and a host at WQHT and to pledge $1 million in tsunami relief, the fact that the drive-time hosts felt comfortable enough to perform a bit that was so insensitive to its core audience in the first place speaks to the distance between the conglomerates that manage the stations and the communities they are supposed to serve. About the people who ultimately decide what's heard on your local radio station, activist and journalist Davey D recently told Democracy Now , "we've got to know that these are 40 and 50-year-old men and women behind the scenes, calling the shots, deciding that at 7:00 at night, you can hear the Yin Yang Twins talking about 'wait until you see mi d-i-c-k' and that it's not a problem."

Along with radio consolidation has come the emergence of nationally syndicated morning drive-time programming (6:00 to 10:00 A.M. in most markets) geared toward African-American and other so-called urban audiences. Of these syndicated shows, the Tom Joyner Morning Show (TJMS) is best known. With a foothold in more than a hundred urban radio markets, the TJMS is potentially a formidable political force, as it can reach and unify listeners across the country. In its best moment, the TJMS is a digitized version of the chitlin' circuit, the network of clubs, restaurants, hotels, dance halls and the like that were crucial components of black life and culture during the era of Jim Crow segregation. As African-Americans pushed for integrated social and cultural institutions in the 1950s and 1960s, the thinking was that the chitlin' circuit would die off. But in the current era of niche marketing -- which urban radio and R&B exemplify -- the chitlin' circuit survives not to unite to black audiences but to deliver advertisers access to a vibrant black middle class with disposable incomes.

Musically, the TJMS adheres to a standard "smooth R&B and classic Soul" format with no interest in breaking new R&B acts. Instead they have made even harder for local acts to break through. Nationally syndicated shows such as the TJMS or The Doug Banks Morning Show (on ABC Radio Networks), have made local drive-time personalities obsolete, thus denying many audiences the opportunity to have their local culture and music reflected during the drive-time hours, when listenership is at its peak. Despite being jettisoned from New York's WRKS in early 2003, the TJMS cemented its domination of the urban market when Tom Joyner entered into a partnership with Cathy Hughes's Radio One Corporation, the largest black-owned radio conglomerate.

Entire Article: popmatters.com

Rhythm and Bullshit?: The Slow Decline of R&B, Epilogue

If the best new artists are shut out from urban radio, what's an R&B fan to do? Here, some suggestions of where to look for the genre's current torchbearers.

While the slow collapse of the independent-promoter payola scheme suggests an opportunity for non-mainstream artists, the practice of legal sponsored spins (pay for play legitimized by a broadcast disclaimer) continue to put small independent labels and the innovative R&B they cultivate at a disadvantage-they simply don't have the resources to compete in that arena. Even major-label R&B artists struggle to be heard: Tweet garnered far less attention for her truly nuanced R&B than for the "scandal" of her first single "Oh My" and the rumor of a relationship with Missy Elliot. Perhaps John Legend's success signals a small shift-I'm not sure many programmers would have risked playing a singer-songwriter five years ago. But for every John Legend, there are others who never break through. For those enterprising program directors and fans looking for R&B that deserves greater recognition, here's a brief list of worthy artists still below the radar.

Lewis Taylor

That I need to begin with Lewis Taylor epitomizes the tragedy of contemporary R&B. Although Taylor is arguably the most brilliant talent to emerge in R&B in the last decade, most R&B fans in the United States are still unaware of his existence, even after six studio recordings (the last four on his own label). The reason for Taylor's invisibility are many, starting with his Britishness and his whiteness and his commitment to push the boundaries of R&B. Taylor makes R&B for folk as fluent in Marvin Gaye and Bobby Womack as they are in the Beach Boys ( Pet Sounds specifically) and Radiohead. Taylor's eponymous 1977 debut is simply classic, and it earned him the attention of D'Angelo, who reportedly referred to Taylor as his favorite R&B artist. Even the late Aaliyah remarked that she was into Taylor, telling the New York Daily News in 2001, "My favorite CD right now is Lewis Taylor. My stylist had a mixed tape with his song 'Bittersweet' and I had to know who was singing." The influence of Taylor's "Bittersweet" can be heard on the Timbaland-produced "Come Back in One Piece," from the Romeo Must Die soundtrack. Taylor's obscurity has a great deal to do with his then-label's inability to grasp what he was doing musically, particularly as Taylor resisted being packaged like blue-eyed-soul hacks such as Michael Bolton. Lewis Taylor and Lewis II (2000) (which included Taylor's sweet cover of Jeff Buckley's "Everybody Here Wants You") are the best introductions to Taylor, though his independently released Stoned, Part 1 (2003) is also a fine outing. Stoned, Part 1, will be released in the United States in September by Hacktone Records.

Rahsaan Patterson

In his thoughtful biography of Luther Vandross, journalist Craig Seymor suggests that one of Vandross's great talents was his ability to expand the range of emotions that could be expressed by a black male Soul or R&B artist. Of course Vandross paid a symbolic price for his expressiveness: His emotional depth was often read as evidence of a diminished masculinity, as if the two were antithetical. Journalist Ernest Hardy says it best: "Naked emotionalism renders almost any male in American culture suspect, but especially if he's of the Negro persuasion, and most especially if the emotion is not exaggeratedly countered with macho or thug signifiers." In this regard, Vandross suffered the fate of Ronnie Dyson-tragically obscured in an era marked by Teddy Pendergrass-like gruffness and hypersexuality-and foreshadowed that of Rahsaan Patterson. Though Patterson's two major label releases, Rahsaan Patterson (1996) and Love in Stereo (1999), lack the musical depth of, say, D'Angelo's Voodoo (2000) or the catchy riffs of Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite (1996), Patterson's voice is otherworldly. In a recent Village Voice piece, Jason King describes Patterson as the "love-child of Chaka Khan and Al Jarreau." No other contemporary vocalist, in my view, could pull off the emotional intricacies that Patterson displays on tracks like "Can't We Wait a Minute", "Joy" (backed by Take 6), and "It's All Right Now". After an amicable split with MCA, Patterson is currently touring in support of his indie-label debut After Hours.

Jaguar Wright

It was Jaguar Wright's misfortune that her debut, Denials, Delusions, and Decisions was released just as the neo-Soul gravy train was grinding to a halt. Truth be told, Wright never really fit the neo-Soul script, something that her label at the time never quite understood. Wright's vocals were ragged with the kind of emotion last heard in these parts from the likes of Betty Wright (no relation), Ann Peebles and Millie Jackson. As Wright told Philadelphia's City Paper back in 2002, "I make cussin' sound natural. I'm not vulgar. I make grown-folks music; I don't make music for kids. It's grown language, talking 'bout grown **** for grown people." The title of Wright's new recording on the Artemis label- Divorcing the Neo 2 Marry Soul -suggests she has finally made a recording that speaks to her grittier sensibilities. Tracks such as "Play the Field" and "Free" sound like they could have been recorded at Muscle Shoals (Fame Sound Studio) 25 years ago. Thus it's not surprising that Wright dares to remake Shirley Brown's "Woman to Woman"-a song that brought the drama of infidelity to Soul and R&B audiences when R. Kelly was still in kindergarten. Wright's new found musical freedom is best expressed on "Do Your Worst"-a nearly 12-minute display of anger, betrayal and murderous rage that recalls Lonette McKee's heartbreaking rendition of Van McCoy's "Giving Up" in the film Sparkle (1976).

Eric Roberson

Bilal and Musiq are generally regarded as the signature male vocalists of the so-called Philly Neo-Soul movement. But Musiq is perhaps a better songwriter and arranger than he is a vocalist, and Bilal's vocal sensibility is limited somewhat to the recording studio. Arguably the most accomplished artist to emerge from the Philly scene is Eric Roberson. Roberson's songwriting credits can be found on albums by Will Downing, Musiq, Vivian Green and on Jill Scott's Experience: Jill Scott (826+), where most first heard Roberson, opposite Scott on "One Time". At that point, Roberson already had a small underground following courtesy of his now out-of-print and hard-to-find The Esoteric Movement (2001)-it lists for $30-plus used on Amazon. Trying to feed the needs of those clamoring for more music, Roberson emptied his drawer and independently released Eric Roberson Presents: The Vault 1.0 (later updated as The Vault, 1.5 ). There are many standouts on Roberson's latest, including "Def Ears" and "Couldn't Hearme". Throughout, Roberson proves that sample-based R&B is not totally bankrupt. On the nostalgic "Right Back to Me" Roberson makes ample use of Isaac Hayes's version of the Carpenters' "Close to You (They Long to Be)", creating a lush musical landscape reminiscent of Hayes's own creative peak in the early 1970s on Hot Buttered Soul and Black Moses.

Frank McComb

Like the title of the song he performed on Buckshot LeFonque's (Branford Marsalis) Music Revolution, Frank McComb is a phoenix-Donny Hathaway reborn. After a canned Motown outing, his major label debut Love Stories (2000) offered him chance for wider recognition beyond those few who caught his performance with Marsalis. But that recognition never came, as McComb suffered the fate of so many decidedly mature R&B artists from the late 1990s-Will Downing, Johnny Gill, Rachelle Ferrell and Regina Belle among them-who were too "old" for contemporary R&B and arguably too soulful for the "Smoove" jazz denizens. Truth (2003), McCombs's follow-up, wasn't even released in the States, and that's a shame. Tracks such as "When You Call My Name", "Better Off Without You", and "Intimate Time" only reinforce McComb's furthering of Hathaway's legacy-hopefully a duet between Combs and Lalah Hathaway awaits us in the future-especially at a time when contemporary R&B could desperately use the secularized spirituality that made Hathaway so affecting in the first place.

Mint Condition

When Mint Condition, six musicians from Minneapolis, first emerged in 1991 with their debut Meant to Be Meant, they were quickly regarded as part of the R&B avant-garde-group that includes Meshell Ndegeocello, Joi, Van Hunt, Martin Luther, Anthony David, D'Angelo, Erykah Badu and Res. Though Mint Condition recorded some of the best R&B of the past 15 years with recordings like From the Mint Factory (1993) and Definition of a Band (1996), and though their lead vocalist, Stokley, is on the shortlist of the best vocalists of the 1990s, the group never caught on with most R&B listeners. Six years after the largely ignored Life's Aquarium, Mint Condition -- now a quintet since Keri Lewis (Mr. Toni Braxton) departed the group amicably -- returned with Livin' the Luxury Brown, released on their own label, Caged Bird. Mint Condition is in regular form throughout the album, though it lacks a signature ballad on the level of "Pretty Brown Eyes" (1991), "If You Love Me" (1999), or their classic "What Kind of Man Can I Be". Highlights include "Sad Girl", the breezy "Look Whatchu Done for Me" and the lead single, "I'm Ready".

Carmen Rodgers

While so many of us profess our love for the indie world of neo-Soul, Nu-Soul or whatever label we're attaching to this music today, the reality is that many of these artists-no matter how good their music sounds while we're waiting for the open mic performance at the local Afro-Boho spot- are somewhat flawed. The major labels might not be interested in promoting R&B artists who don't have some kind of affiliation with a hip-hop crew, but give then some credit for at least being able to identify talent. That said, Carmen Rodgers might be an exception-On her indie debut Free (ABMG/Expansion Records), Rodgers manages to neither pander to Soul music's past nor tries to keep pace with the fleeting rhythms of contemporary R&B. There is much to like about Free, including "Missing You" and "Fallen", but the real gem of the disc is Rodgers's remake of the Captain and Tennille's "The Way (I Want to Touch)".

Faith Evans

In many ways Faith Evans doesn't belong on this list., but she has always been in the shadow of Mary J. Blige and her late husband Christopher Wallace and too often betrayed by material deemed appropriate by the Puffinator. Liberated from Bad Boy land, Evans released The First Lady (Capitol), which is simply her most accomplished recording. On the lead single, "Again", Ivan Barias and Carvin Haggins (late of A Touch of Jazz Productions) provide Evans with some Motown-era pop candy, helping her to live up to the regality of the disc's title. The duo continues their winning ways on tracks like "Stop and Go", "Get Over You" and cutesy "Jealous", which samples Los Angeles Negroes' "Esta noche la paso contigo" (1975). The First Lady loses much of its glow when Barias and Haggins aren't in the room-Pharrell's "Goin' Out" is easily the worst track. That the recording's quality drops when Pharrell and Jermaine Dupri are producing should be an indication to the majors that star producers don't always deliver the goods-the money could be better spent on actual promotion. The one exception here is "Mesmerized," produced by Chucky Thompson, Andre Johnson and Todd Russaw (Faith's hubby). Replete with rhythm guitar jacked from George Benson and the bassline from Lou Donaldson's version of "Who's Making Love", "Mesmerized" might be Evans's strongest track. The first lady of R&B, though? More like the second coming of Lynn Collins.

Raheem DeVaughn

Raheem DeVaughn is one of those artists that has benefited from the presence of Satellite Radio. While it's likely that the same kind of paid-spins politics is happening at XM and Sirius, satellite radio for the time being still delivers on its promise to break the monotony. DeVaughn's The Love Experience (Jive) exemplifies this. The album suffers from the ongoing need of artists to use all 80 minutes the compact disc format allows, but once you strip away the filler, what's left is compelling. DeVaughn's vocals are reminiscent of Dwele's, but where the latter's music was overly restrained, DeVaughn is R&B unreconstructed -- messy and ragged. The lead single, "Guess Who Loves You More", with its smart use of Earth, Wind and Fire's "Can't Hide Love", is a fine introduction to DeVaughn, but the real gems are the Prince-like "Who" and two political tracks, "Until" and "Catch 22". On the latter track DeVaughn perfects the symphonic thug soul of Dave Hollister ("Baby Mama Drama") and Blackstreet ("Hustler's Prayer").

Entire Article: popmatters.com