al ship's top 50 r&b singles of the 00s -- which is your favorite?

i'll upload zips for this at some point tonight

"1 Thing", easy, and I love a lot of these.

itersting list, we have the same #1 were I to mine which I keep putting off.. so yeah voted for "promise," perfect song and it defines 00s R&B pretty perfectly

I would substitute some of these choices for less obv ones, like to me "call me" is a much better tweet single than "oop...", "Questions" > "Officially Missing You," etc. ... but yeah good list some dude.

thanks! i don't know if i'd call "Officially Missing You" one of the obvious choices, though.

all of these listed are weighted more toward the first half of the decade, but this one more than any of the others so far: 6 songs from 2000, 10 from '01, 6 from '02, 7 from '03, 4 from '04, 4 from 2005, 5 from '06, 5 from '07, 1 from '08, and 2 from '09

listed=lists

i prob haven't heard more on this list than any of the previous ones but

1 promise
2 we belong together
3 so sick
4 blame it
5 if i ain't got you
6 step in the name of love (remix)
7 gone
8 yo (excuse me miss)
9 u got it bad
10 when i see u
11 more than a woman
12 peaches & cream
13 untitled
14 laundromat
15 confessions pt 2
16 thong song
17 pretty wings
18 get me bodied
19 closer
20 ordinary people
19
20

this should be easy for me because it contains my number one single, full stop, of the entire decade - and in the top spot to boot. music really didn't get much better than "promise" in the 00s.

for most of the list i thought it was the list in ships' series that would end up being most divergent to my own putative one - from the destiny's child diss to the lack of dreamery, then...the top 17 happened and i had to refrain from replaying OMGOMG every time al tweeted a new one.

agree with brainwasher re: "call me", which would have been top 10 on my list probably. "burn" would have been my top usher choice, "u don't have to call" wouldn't have been a choice...have never been super-enthusiastic about "rock your body" either, worst of the justified singles imo. would've gone for "no more drama", "stay down" and "be without you" over "just fine" (though still like it).

nice to see "heard it all before" and "so gone" so high up! and to be reminded of 112 and tamia. and good looking out for "get me bodied".

no words for the polow remix of "when i see u"/richcraft remix of "why don't we fall in love?"

kinda don't get how you love those two alicia tracks but disdain her others...i've always thought her basic aesthetic has been pretty much the same every time out (in terms of her vocal approach and songwriting, not production obv).

great list anyway! tracks i hadn't heard before that i really like on first listen - that faith evans one, and the musiq soulchild one. also hadn't heard either the prince or the mj, but (on one listen) both sort of bored me.

1. promise
2. laundromat
3. we belong together
4. step in the name of love (remix)
5. case of the ex
6. more than a woman
7. a woman's threat
8. when i see u
9. you don't know my name
10. so gone

ignore those bottom two number durr

yeah j0rdan you're gonna learn some dope jams when you put together the zip

jesus you weren't kidding about the drum sound on "charlene"

the 20 i listed i already would say are 10/10 or 9.5 of 10 so anything that can jump into the top 20 would be O_O and awesome

like...do you not know "So Gone"!? (xpost)

This list is fucking amazing, except of course I hate "Irreplaceable".

I accidentally voted for You Don’t Know My Name, but I was thinking of If I Ain't Got You.

Kanye's remix of "If I Ain't Got You" is really great as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH6A8XCUux0

like...do you not know "So Gone"!? (xpost)

― lil bow bow (some dude), Friday, November 5, 2010 4:16 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah i do -- i don't know like sunshine anderson, tank, prince, michael, faith evans, isely brothers etc

you don't know sunshine anderson?! you have a treat in store

i think i still have a promo of the album "heard it all before" was off, in the depths of my room somewhere. i can't really remember the other songs.

i got super excited that "sunshine anderson" was this woman on the food network that goes by the name "sunny anderson" (& who was talking on yesterday's episode about cooking for nore) but they're diff ppl

yeah that sunshine track is great, surprised you all haven't heard that Faith Evans, Faithfully is one of the best r&b albums of the 00s actually, I would've put this one over "you gets no love"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8vGGWn2AmE
(one of my favorite songs ever... definite top 10 on my list)

also "burning up" remix with Freeway!

smh at "faithfully"

50. 112 - "Peaches & Cream" (2001)
42. Tweet f/ Missy Elliott - "Oops (Oh My)" (2002)
30. Maxwell - "Pretty Wings" (2009)
29. Amerie - "Why Don't We Fall In Love?" (2002)
24. Janet Jackson - "Doesn't Really Matter" (2000)
23. Usher - "U Got It Bad" (2001)
11. Mariah Carey - “We Belong Together” (2005)
7. Mya - "Case of the Ex" (2000)
4. D'Angelo - "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" (2000)
3. Amerie - "1 Thing" (2005)

^^^^genuinely have no idea how to pick between these, it is like the pinnacle of music here imo.

xp Her new one is titled Something About Faith lol

no words for the polow remix of "when i see u"/richcraft remix of "why don't we fall in love?"

great tracks that will definitely figure into some kind of remix list at some point, but these are purely about originals or whatever version was the biggest hit of a song

kinda don't get how you love those two alicia tracks but disdain her others...i've always thought her basic aesthetic has been pretty much the same every time out (in terms of her vocal approach and songwriting, not production obv).

I like most later Alicia singles to varying degrees except for, like, "No One," but those 2 songs are definitely the tops and I just hate "Fallin'" and "A Woman's Worth"

yeah i was crackin jokes on twitter recently about how Faith just gave up on trying with her album titles

i think "like you'll never see me again" & "try sleeping w/ a broken heart" are great second tier singles

yeah those are v. good, but totally not top 50 material

yeah i was crackin jokes on twitter recently about how Faith just gave up on trying with her album titles

making such a lame conceit last for so long is kind of admirable in a way

Best Faith Evans album title

ha i downloaded an OG ron c screwed remix of "call my name"

this is awesome

haha nice

"Call My Name" is part of the 25% or so of the list that i fell in love with while driving home and listening to the post-10pm slow jam radio blocks.

i'm gonna vote for step in the name of love cuz i went to get some wings at this place and there was a poster for some "chicago steppers" event called step in the name of love going on in north mpls and it was kind of a heartwarming show flier.

when i was on a rodney jerkins kick a while back i came across this song off 'invincible' that's kind of awesome

mike sounds rather ridiculous on it but the beat is pretty O_O

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWjYxR2cs5s

awesome list

"promise" of course

also this one

hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miBfwWHSmb8

btw ship, why no badu? "bag lady"!!

or are u doing a separate "neo-soul" thing?

i've never been that big on "Bag Lady" tbh -- my fav Badu single of the decade is probably "Love Of My Life" and I almost put that on the rap/R&B list but the Common verse is so so garbage

the 5-10 neo soul tracks on this list about cover how i feel about it as a singles genre

yeah common's verse is really terrible on that

LOOKIN FOR CHEESE THAT DON'T MAKE HER A HOODRAT.

I bet he thought that was clever too lol

i can guarantee that kanye think its clever

Who's phrase is this originally: Before he speaks his suit bespoke?
Please don't say its Kanye West, because this is exactly where I heard this phrase, but I immediately remembered that I have heard it elsewhere, probably in English Classical Literature, but where??! Thank you for help.

Yeah man, it totally reads like Dickens.

part 1 http://www.mediafire.com/?ceju5idos7u0uff
part 2 http://www.mediafire.com/?6or82xrek958wsh

'charlene'

jesus you weren't kidding about the drum sound on "charlene"

― ain't no half-trollin (J0rdan S.), Friday, November 5, 2010 4:15 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is the kind of shit you only notice when its pointed out first imo

i think i'm the only person i know who thinks "Can't Let Go" is 10/10 and better than "Charlene"

well...i noticed it right away obv and that's just always how i've heard the song, but i was the one that pointed out so i won't get all chicken/egg about it

To a certain stripe of R&B fan and/or dorky internet critic, Terius “The-Dream” Nash is the greatest thing to happen to urban music in the past 4 years

classic shlpl3yesque condescension here

i like "Can't Let Go" but it never got played on the radio remotely as much as "Charlene" so it's hard to say whether it would hold up as well

would you not say that's a fairly accurate thing to say, though? xpost

i mean he's fuckin jesus to a lot of people, some of them are serious R&B heads and some of them are corny blog fux

first of all it is fairly accurate, second deej calling someone on condescension is rmde

also obv she who will not be named = ROBBED

haha i read that rolled my eyes a little, but out of love

xp

ha xp

tyvm j s for the zips and al s for the great list, all of these songs are hitting the spot tonite

bottom line is lots of people LOVE the-dream and i don't, at the end of the day i don't really put a big value judgement on that, it's whatever

i'm kind of with j0rdan in thinking that Beyonce's actual body of work really doesn't live up to her stature

i can live with only having b'day tbh

though i love a bunch of her other stuff

and yeah "me & u" obv a glaring omission - predictable but still rong

"me & u" was in a lot of early drafts of the list but yeah i wasn't very heartbroken about cutting it

i need to listen to this anthony hamilton album -- i downloaded it during the short lived r&b listening club reign and never got around to playing more than half of it

Those are not Ne-Yo's 2 best singles.

"so sick" is his def his best single imo

i was surprised to see "closer" over "miss independent" which would prob be my #2

btw the version of "when i see u" in that zip has a tag in the middle of it, it's not terribly intrusive but here's a clean version

http://www.mediafire.com/?pn65atydkn5xlb2

i wonder what the most obvious canonical song(s) are that people here genuinely think i shafted -- "Ignition"? "Say My Name"? "Family Affair"?

"crazy"

i love "Miss Independent" and hemmed and hawed about leaving it out, but "Closer" was my #1 single of 2008 and it just had to be there

altho i guess i don't know the r&b chart numbers on that, so maybe it's much more pop

you mentioned it in the piece but "cry me a river" as well

i thought about "Crazy" for the rap/R&B crossover list but i decided that a Cee-Lo solo single was more R&B and something I liked more

oh and you crackpots all prolly still worship that Lumidee song

yeah, also there's a gaping hole in this list where sean paul should be -- "like glue" and/or "get busy" is totally canon

i'm listening to toya's "i do"

i could start listing songs i would have included but What are the best R&B songs of the 2000s has a lot of it

i don't know that i'd call "like glue" r&b but it should be on a list of some sort

totally not putting dancehall on the R&B list -- probably just going to drop that stuff into the pop list along with other orphans that didn't quite fit right into other lists

unless you were gonna do a whole separate dancehall list, sean paul's big singles all went like #1 on the r&b chart, so they'd def fit here

yeah but dancehall is not R&B (only mentioned Lumidee because she's just a singer who had a hit on a riddim)

i mean, obv they could fit on a pop list too, i forgot about that

classic shlpl3yesque condescension here

oh deej why u gotta be so rude all the time!

teedra moses was a glaring omission for me too (though my favourite single of hers, "you'll never find (a better woman)", would've qualified for the rap/r&b list). actually, limiting it to singles removes a huge amount of my personal favourites, but that's the way it goes i guess.

i was really surprised to see electrik red missing!

also

lumidee - never leave you
nina sky - move ya body
toya - i do
lina - playa no mo
cassie - me & u
teairra mari - make her feel good
lloyd - you
slim ft. yung joc - so fly
eryakh badu - danger/the healer
dame four - how we roll
jazmine sullivan - lions, tigers & bears
yummy bingham - come get it
kelis - trick me
amy winehouse - rehab/you know i'm no good/back to black
ashanti - rock wit u/only u/good good
jill scott - gettin' in the way/golden
angie stone - wish i didn't miss you
blu cantrell - oops (hit 'em up style)
solange - sandcastle disco
jennifer hudson - spotlight
christina milian - dip it low/whatever you want

i def would've put "need u bad" on here -- i like it more than "so gone"

"you" was on the rap/r&b crossover list

oh yeah i checked that but didn't delete it for some reason

"get it shawty" is in retrospect missing from the rap/r&b list

1. Ciara - "Promise" (2006)
2. R. Kelly - “Step In The Name of Love (Remix)" (2003)
15. Fantasia - "When I See U" (2007)
16. Nivea f/ R. Kelly - “Laundromat” (2003)
26. Beyonce - "Irreplaceable" (2006)
29. Amerie - "Why Don't We Fall In Love?" (2002)

^^^ These are my absolute favourites but I predictably i pretty much love this whole list.

I'm the weirdo who privileges early Lloyd over later Lloyd -- only really considered "Hey Young Girl" and "Southside" for the list.

teedra moses was a glaring omission for me too (though my favourite single of hers, "you'll never find (a better woman)", would've qualified for the rap/r&b list). actually, limiting it to singles removes a huge amount of my personal favourites, but that's the way it goes i guess.

i was really surprised to see electrik red missing!

Teedra and ER were both on the list of fav albums of the decade i did last year, but i didn't quite feel strongly enough about their singles to include them

I'm the biggest stan for Teedra's album there is, but I'd agree with that actually.

these are my fav R&B albums btw, only half of them share songs with the singles list:

18. Aaliyah - Aaliyah (Blackground/Virgin Records, 2001)
19. Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War (Universal Motown, 2008)
28. Raphael Saadiq - Instant Vintage (Universal Records, 2002)
42. Electrik Red - How To Be A Lady: Vol. 1 (Radio Killa/Def Jam Records, 2009)
54. Beyoncé - B’Day (Columbia Records, 2006)
56. R. Kelly - Chocolate Factory (Jive Records, 2003)
63. Amerie - All I Have (Columbia Records, 2002)
69. Robin Thicke - Something Else (Star Trak/Interscope Records, 2008)
79. Usher - 8701 (Arista Records, 2001)
81. Teedra Moses - Complex Simplicity (TVT Records, 2004)
92. John Legend - Once Again (G.O.O.D. Music/Sony, 2006)
99. 112 - Part III (Bad Boy Records/Arista/BMG, 2001)

voted Thong Song because it's insane

in a very good way of course

shit i forgot all about "doesn't really matter" - i loved this song when it came out

jennifer hudson - spotlight

love this to death and almost included it but Stargate were already the most represented producers on the list

amy winehouse - rehab/you know i'm no good/back to black

i like "Rehab" and thought about including it in the name of variety, but that's one respect in which the ilx polls have kind of influenced these lists -- don't want to throw corny voters an easy one the way the Yeah Yeah Yeahs got all the votes in the rock list poll

ashanti - rock wit u/only u/good good

thought about "Only U" but was ultimately comfortable with just saying fuck Ashanti on principle

out of the joints that i hadn't heard/didn't remember, i so far love this tank one the most

yeah "Maybe I Deserve" is the shit, man

"Promise" is a really good #1.

"Doesn't Really Matter" is a pretty annoying pick for Janet, tho her only really R&B album of the decade was also her worst.

< / geir >

1 Thing is winning this, right?

don't want to throw corny voters an easy one the way the Yeah Yeah Yeahs got all the votes in the rock list poll

too late

lol thong song's key change is hilarious and ridiculous, i love it.

anyway

1 promise
2 pretty wings
3 case of the ex

actually nvm b/c a ton of these are amazing and i don't wanna keep choosing

Faith Evans - "You Gets No Love" (2001)

I know it's not too ghetto!

I'm disappointed at the lack of Jennifer Lopez, Ashanti and Murder Inc., Ja's bubble gum corniness ruled the first half of the decade.

jlo featured once & ja rule twice (once w jlo) on the crossover list

al ship's top 50 rap/r&b crossover singles of the 00s -- which is your favorite?

just realized that no "shawty is a 10" on that list is unforgivable

part 1 http://www.mediafire.com/?ceju5idos7u0uff
part 2 http://www.mediafire.com/?6or82xrek958wsh

― ain't no half-trollin (J0rdan S.), Friday, November 5, 2010 11:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

http://imgur.com/jtZKE.jpg

i wonder what the most obvious canonical song(s) are that people here genuinely think i shafted -- "Ignition"? "Say My Name"? "Family Affair"?

― lil bow bow (some dude), Saturday, November 6, 2010 12:34 AM (17 hours ago) Bookmark

I probably would've voted for Say My Name, didn't realize it was 2000s though.

snubbing 'ignition' is heinous but will make the vote more interesting

its really hard 2 understate how many dream songs i would have in a list like this

voted peaches & cream

good vote

snubbing 'ignition' is heinous but will make the vote more interesting

― samosa gibreel, Saturday, November 6, 2010 6:21 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

honestly i love the original "Ignition" and probably would have put it on there were I not worried about people assuming I meant the more popular remix

just realized that no "shawty is a 10" on that list is unforgivable

― wakafledia (k3vin k.), Saturday, November 6, 2010 5:49 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

i prefer the version w/o Fab but being as that's the one that was really a hit i guess it would've been considered for the other list? i like "Rockin' That Shit" way more, though.

either way it does seem weird that you wouldnt include him. hes hardly a just-R&B fans or just-internet nerds artist -- i mean even tricky is doing like generic slim thug beats now -- his career became less pop & more internet nerd as time went on but hes hardly not significant or something

revisionism imo

& no i cant explain why your revisionism is less acceptable than mine in other areas w/out marinating on it some more

yeah ships i was talking about the crossover list

also i could complain about "bed" but we've been here before too

either way it does seem weird that you wouldnt include him. hes hardly a just-R&B fans or just-internet nerds artist -- i mean even tricky is doing like generic slim thug beats now -- his career became less pop & more internet nerd as time went on but hes hardly not significant or something

revisionism imo

― holy lolson (deej), Saturday, November 6, 2010 8:22 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

these lists are my canon, not me trying to claim it's THE canon, and I didn't really make an effort to include significant artists/songs beyond what I actually enjoy.

the "R&B fan and crit nerd" line wasn't an attempt to reduce or play down his fanbase, really I was saying that he HAS been embraced by a pretty wide cross section of music listeners -- how would you describe The-Dream fans that are neither R&B heads nor internet music nerds and how many of them are there!?

how many of those would you say there are of any R&B artist? certainly more than for like anthony hamilton

& yeah i recognize the personal canon vs. real canon distinction but part of the 'fun' of this obv is seeing how your canon & a larger one interact

yeah, true. i'm just saying i'm wary of the 'revisionism' thing, because i'm not trying to rewrite history if i'm telling a personal history of a decade of music listening in which The-Dream was never a major figure.

i don't follow the Anthony Hamilton question. i'm asking, demographically, who listens to The-Dream that is resolutely neither of the 2 vague groups i described? do you just mean like rap fans who only buy one or two R&B albums a year and it's usually something like R. Kelly or T-Pain?

yeah!

or 'pop' fans who operate the same way

i think probably what was kinda novel w/ the dream was how he had this weird negotiation between 'serious R&B fans' & 'pop R&B fans' & how he was working in both lanes

i think the internerd critic stans are a later development

does he really have pop fans, though? his singles never did very well on non-urban pop radio even when they featured Mariah or Kanye or whatever, and i kinda doubt most of the people that listen to his Rihanna, Beyonce, etc. hits really know or care who wrote them.

i dunno that crowd is probably smaller now than it was around 'falsetto' & going into the 2nd album, but he styles himself very much as an R&Bpop artist in that vein! rather than as an auteur & i know he was never competing with t-pain or kells in overall popular/sales but i think he def saw himself that way.

instead hes probably moving in a more neptunes-esque direction -- where his critical acclaim sorta puts him in a weirder, slightly diff zone (more supporting player than star the way pharell is too)

voted for 'case of the ex' cuz it has p much everything i want in an r&b track & im glad to see it rated so high here

yeah i dunno -- i mean there are so many Chris Brown and Trey Songz types that have real R&B/pop crossover and more and more vaguely R&B types like DeRulo on pop radio, compared to those guys The-Dream's career seems, whether intentionally or not, very geared just toward R&B radio/fanbases (xpost)

Ships' position seems right to me in that none of the pop fans I know who check for Beyonce and Rihanna and etc have ever heard of dreams, still.

Mind you those types are usually pretty ignorant of male R&B generally unless it inadvertently sounds like Madonna somewhat (e.g. "Dynamite"), so probably not the pop audience deej means.

pop heads tend to sleep, perchance on the-dream

^^^this post = im wrong

superior rhetoric right there

i mean i think i more or less agree with al, i just think hes understating his pop appeal somewhat ... its a matter of degree rather than a straight up contradiction

FUCK i really forgot how good "doesn't really matter" is -- i didn't recognize the name but i instantly remembered the song itself -- def top 10 in this list

anytime i talk about the-dream to anyone who isn't an r&b head or at least someone who listens to urban radio, i have to preface it with "wrote 'umbrella' and 'single ladies'" cause otherwise they have no idea who he is.

^^shipz/tim/rev otm. i might expand it slightly to include some pop heads (the kind who pay attention to the industry, songwriters etc) and some indie heads (pfork approval and so on means he's a lot of indie kids' token r&b artist of choice) but his name recognition with any listener more casual than that is pretty much zero - nowhere near as high as even the neptunes circa the first n*e*r*d album.

Amazing list ... apart from the tracks Lex mentioned, no 3LW/Omarion/Brooke Valentine? I guess Wayne Wonder'll turn up in the pop list, etc.

^^shipz/tim/rev otm. i might expand it slightly to include some pop heads (the kind who pay attention to the industry, songwriters etc) and some indie heads (pfork approval and so on means he's a lot of indie kids' token r&b artist of choice) but his name recognition with any listener more casual than that is pretty much zero - nowhere near as high as even the neptunes circa the first n*e*r*d album.

― lex lex lex lex lex on the track BOW (lex pretend), Sunday, November 7, 2010 4:06 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

again, this wasnt a matter of literal popularity but of approach & positioning w/r/t the neptunes

also, i think its more true now than it was between his 1st & 2nd albums, where he seemed to be going on that path -- my whole thing w/ the-dream was an argument that w/ his last album he basically gave up worrying about writing straight up pop songs & started playing to his niche audience

like to me a song like 'falsetto' or 'shawty is the shit' goes for something really different more 'traditional' than the singles he went on to release later

oh yeah, 3LW also robbed

i don't think he gave up so much as he just simply didn't do it as well

yeah i mean im not a mind reader -- but stuff like 'yamaha' feels less traditional / pop chart aiming than 'falsetto' or 'shawty' do. theres a reason those were the singles on his first album & not 'fast car'

"yamaha" is not a single

its got a video iirc

"yamaha" wasn't a single? "love king" and "make up bag" don't feel any less in line with urban radio than "shawty is the shit" or whatever, they're just not as good of songs.

'love king' def feels like a generic collection of the-dream tics whereas falsetto feels like a song, that he thought about how to write. so in that sense i think it works just as well as an example as 'yamaha' would so w/e

i mean, "yamaha" was part of that long movie type thing that came out before the album, but that encompassed that whole string of songs

glad no one in this discussion has any idea what they're talking about

peace

"love king" sounds like a generic dream radio single, not like a generic dream fans-only album track tho

i think his tics are what appeal to fans-only ppl? so im not sure i agree

it's not any more full of -dream tics than any of his legit hits (all of which are full of them)

shawty fine (A!)
shwawty tight (A!)

shwawty

the biggest "love king" reference points are pretty much "rockin that shit" & "shawty is a ten" so i don't think it works for your argument

i mean, you could definitely argue that it's just a weak attempt at combining those songs, but it's not that it... appeals to a niche audience or whatever

im saying by definition a song that is more about his 'style' than his 'songwriting' is a song that appeals to the-dream fans

i don't even understand where you're making the distinction -- what about "rockin that shit" & "shawty is a ten" makes them more about 'songwriting' & "love king" more about 'style'

'rockin that shit' is more in the latter camp imo

its better than 'love king' but 'shawty is the shit' has more of a traditional "hits" type songwriting style that tries to appeal to a wider audience

Just stepping in to say—and I know I can only speak for myself, obv—I'm not a huge R&B head (neither am I a corny fuck, or at least in the sense meant here), but far from Pitchfork being the reason I listen to The-Dream, it's ILM and only ILM that turned me onto him. I almost never even read Pitchfork, other than once in a blue moon following some link there, the last time being easily five or six months ago. IRL, from corny types to pop fans to casual non-music people, I try spreading the-Dream love but get mostly blank looks.

Beyonce's actual body of work really doesn't live up to her stature

I played B'Day last week for the first time in two years and turned it off halfway through.

Anyway, I'll echo the praise for this list. I went with "U Got It Bad" over at least a dozen finalists. Neither of my two favorite Ne-Yo singles ("Because of You" and "Sexy Love") made the list, alas.

B'Day is great, wtf

It probably still is -- I just don't want to listen to it right now.

I've never heard of The-Dream at all.

xp fair enough

how do we feel about the remix of "Why Don't We Fall in Love" with Luda?

god i can't wait until al opens this thread again and finds out we spent 20 posts arguing about the-dream XD XD

The greatness of the "Richcraft Remix" of "Why Don't We Fall In Love" makes me disinterested in any other version of the tune apart from that and the OG.

I mostly agree with deej re the-dream: I think with Love King the broad-cross-section-hit impulse is a lot weaker or maybe lazier, and as a result it's the "dream tic" impulse that carries these songs even when formally they sound like hit-attempts - "F.I.L.A." is not as good a radio hit as its predecessor ("Rockin' That Thing") but it's a more condensed, flashy display of the-dream's dreaminess, which makes up 99% of the shortfall.

"Love King" is the one full-bore attempt at a radio hit on there and it's bot surprising that it's also the laziest sounding (though not the worst) song on the album.

How this plays out though can be unpredictable though: "Yamaha" might be playing to his fans who have loved his Prince rips ever since "Fast Car", but it's also still the song I would play from the new album to a "pop" fan who'd never heard of him before (as opposed to a dedicated populist R&B listener who'd never heard of him before - if such a thing exists).

In the same way that Lady Gaga's most gagaist song ("Bad Romance") is also her most broadly attractive song.

It's arguable that in the choice between a kind of populist-R&B-mentality and corny fuxxitude, the "real world" is on the side of corny fuxxitude - at least currently, these kinds of alliances tend to shift over time.

i think im trying to argue theres actually three difft strains in here: like a corny fuxx, R&B populist, R&B auteur fan w/ all slightly difft takes on him that somewhat overlap in difft ways

idk its complicated & im kinda tired of arguing about him / not sure its worth analyzing any more. regardless, his first record is super-important to me, & to my taste in R&B for the past few years, which is why i bothered bringing it up

i think maybe the 'complicated'-ness of it is a result of that first record working as so many difft things to different people, & thats why it remains the best to me

think im trying to argue theres actually three difft strains in here: like a corny fuxx, R&B populist, R&B auteur fan w/ all slightly difft takes on him that somewhat overlap in difft ways

Yes this is right.

al is like the critic least given to hyperbole i have ever read lol

"i don't like ciara but i gotta hand it to her, she did write my favourite r&b song of the decade," "the snare drum on this is atrocious, but... einh, top 10"

lololol

ha otm

great list! looking forward to discovering all these songs

but

"get it shawty" is in retrospect missing from the rap/r&b list

― lex lex lex lex lex on the track BOW (lex pretend), Saturday, November 6, 2010 3:55 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

(although ship's got me intrigued on early lloyd now. need to investigate)

my whole thing w/ the-dream was an argument that w/ his last album he basically gave up worrying about writing straight up pop songs & started playing to his niche audience

wtf are you even arguing deej? you say that, which seems a completely different argument to the reason you originally objected to his exclusion from shipz' list. which was:

either way it does seem weird that you wouldnt include him. hes hardly a just-R&B fans or just-internet nerds artist

also

i think im trying to argue theres actually three difft strains in here: like a corny fuxx, R&B populist, R&B auteur fan w/ all slightly difft takes on him that somewhat overlap in difft ways

yes, most pop artists appeal to multiple demographics in different ways! uh.

also tim says "i agree with deej" before going on to outline yet another completely different argument that has more to do w/the-dream's intent than his popularity

lex otm

i feel like "wtf are you even arguing deej?" needs to get in line for ilm board description status

i don't want to get all whiney and get into an endless back and forth w/deej but dude this habit of picking arguments for the sheer sake of it - and being overly rude and unpleasant in doing so - and in constantly doing it with people who broadly share your taste and who are actually your natural allies, and who you should at least respect enough to behave civilly towards - it's not like we're alex in nyc here - i'm sick of it tbh

Prince's "Call My Name" is an unusual pick -- good one, ship.

Well I agree with Deej that the appeal of the-dream's work is moving away from "classic songs + schtick" and moving towards "just schtick (but what a schtick)" - but I'm ambivalent w/r/t what this means re his popularity, except that I think it's fair to say that these days, to the extent that he appeals to multiple demographics in different ways, he's more likely to appeal to circles other than "R&B populist" than was the case for his first album... Which is not to say that he doesn't appeal to R&B populist types anymore, but that it was probably a bigger portion of the venn diagram than it used to be.

In basic terms, I could imagine heaps of songs on the first album having been given to other artists and still being as good, whereas it's kinda hard to imagine other people singing most of the songs from Love King (or, certainly, most of the second half of Love vs Money). This shift can be framed as a good thing or a bad thing, but whether it actually is one way or another is totally case-by-case IMO.

Meant to say: "Which is not to say that he doesn't appeal to R&B populist types anymore, but that it was probably a bigger portion of the venn diagram than it used to be is now."

it just seems like he wants to use his albums as vehicles for his artistic ambition - his schtick, if you will - and that this desire was fairly obvious from the start, but since the first album he's gotten into a position where he doesn't need to pay more than lip service to the radio side of things (both because of the success of his production/songwriting for other artists and the way it's become obvious that solo pop stardom isn't going to just fall into his lap)

Hmm. I'd have to think about that. I've said earlier that I've now listened to LK as much as I did the first album, and I love them both. I like him best, it seems, at his most functional. Since I'm in the Ship camp of instinctively disliking his voice, I prefer less ostentatious showcases for it.

As for the absence of mass popularity, it's fun to speculate. Maybe the pop and R&B audiences dislike his vocals -- or at least have to warm to them -- too. I do remember that in early '08, when I listened to the first album a lot in my car, a friend heard "Purple Kisses" and said it reminded him of a Missy album track from '97: terrific in the car but outre on the radio.

why is it with the-dream it's just a "shtick" but with artists from other genres its "auteurship"?

i think all three albums are of much the same standard really, i'd rank in difft orders on difft criteria

on radio singles and commercial-dream: L/H > LvM > LK
on high points: LvM > LK > L/H
on flow as an album: LvM > L/H = LK

it just seems like he wants to use his albums as vehicles for his artistic ambition - his schtick, if you will - and that this desire was fairly obvious from the start, but since the first album he's gotten into a position where he doesn't need to pay more than lip service to the radio side of things (both because of the success of his production/songwriting for other artists and the way it's become obvious that solo pop stardom isn't going to just fall into his lap)

I think this is maybe what deej was also saying? I dunno. I'd agree with the above at any rate. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing probably depends on which albums you enjoy most. Obv deej thinks there was a pretty big drop-off from the first to the second. I don't, but I definitely like 1 most, then 2, then 3. From memory, lex, you're 2,3,1, yeah?

X-post sorta!

why is it with the-dream it's just a "shtick" but with artists from other genres its "auteurship"?

I don't like using "auteurship" for anyone. It's such a loaded term that it shapes lines of thought too much (others might say the same thing of "schtick" but I love schticks mostly).

who knows what deej was arguing! i read and re-read that entire exchange three times and couldn't work it out.

i'd go with LvM >> LK = L/H. that = is complicated by LK's and L/H's strengths being so different. really don't think you can argue that any one of them is "way" better than the others.

what pitfalls does shtick avoid that auteurship fall into?

xp

Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris essays.

on a serious note, the expectation of "auteurship" denotes a total control over presentation as much as on songwriting; nothing's left to chance. "Schtick" at least implies a surrender of this control to let's say outside forces.

on one hand i am delighted that this thread has been active in my absence and look forward to catching up and responding but: seriously, fuck you guys for turning this into another The-Dream thread.

haha -- I tried to steer it back by mentioning "Call My Name."

my favorite songs from this list that i wasn't familiar w/ before it

"charlene"
"heard it all before"
"maybe i deserve"

those three would prob be in my top 20 of this list

also made me remember how good "doesn't really matter" & "case of the ex" are

Never heard before today:

Monica - So Gone
Anthony Hamilton - Charlene
Carl Thomas - I Wish
Tamia – Officially Missing You

Amazing list ... apart from the tracks Lex mentioned, no 3LW/Omarion/Brooke Valentine? I guess Wayne Wonder'll turn up in the pop list, etc.

― etc, Sunday, November 7, 2010 2:08 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

"Entourage" was one of the songs it hurt most to cut from the list. i think i dug one of the minor later 3LW singles but not enough to remember anything about it, and I love the Brooke Valentine album but not so much "Girlfight." but yeah, it would've been nice if i made more space for better teenybopper R&B and there will be some kind of Wayne Wonder/Sean Paul/Shaggy etc. dancehall crossover faction on the pop list.

god i can't wait until al opens this thread again and finds out we spent 20 posts arguing about the-dream XD XD

― wakafledia (k3vin k.), Sunday, November 7, 2010 4:52 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

lol just got to this

honestly there are a lot of songs i feel kinda guilty about cutting and just keeping another song from the same artist/album/etc. as a room-saving compromise -- i probably love "Shake It Off" as much as "We Belong Together" or "Girlfriend" as much as "Gone" or "Someone To Call My Lover" as much as "Doesn't Really Matter" or "I Care 4 U" as much as "More Than A Woman" or "Miss Independent" as much as "Closer" or "When You're Mad" as much as "So Sick" or "I Wish" as much as "A Woman's Threat" or "C'mon" as much as "Just A Friend"

how do you feel about Ashanti's "Happy"?

on a serious note, the expectation of "auteurship" denotes a total control over presentation as much as on songwriting; nothing's left to chance. "Schtick" at least implies a surrender of this control to let's say outside forces.

One of the things I really like about about al's lists are how little regard they pay to the role of the artist outside of the individual song in question (this should be a goal for all singles lists IMO but many struggle with it).

"Shtick" (and apols for misspelling above) to me implies "what it is that this artist does that is part and parcel of them" in the sense of being present in most of their work but also what makes the song theirs in a way that it couldn't be for anyone else.

"Doesn't Really Matter" and "Case of the Ex" are great examples of this - both Mya and Janet have high, breathy vocals and are not at all traditional belters (though this high breathiness is very different in each).

Janet's finest songs this decade (def. "Nothing Really Matters", "Someone To Call My Lover" and "All Nite (Don't Stop)" in my opinion, "All 4 U" is up there as well) all fall into the same basic category of ecstatic excited effervescence, but it's difficult to talk about this in terms of auteurship, not merely because Janet isn't seen as being "in control" (title of debut notwithstanding) in the same way as an auteur might, but because this type of song is more like the most (though not reliable) effective tool she has among several, and it's a tool she uses to turn what might otherwise be a weakness into a strength. It's also the kind of thing which possibly puts off as many listeners as it turns on.

The same is true for Mya, whose shtick is a kind of trembling vulnerability that always (to me) implies internal emotional conflict. On "Case of the Ex" she sounds less angry than would another R&B singer working with the same material, and more paranoid or nervous, as if the song is more of a referendum on her than it is an attack on her boyfriend's ex (compare and contrast with "Ring The Alarm", which has more paranoid/nervous/conflicted lyrics but is performed angrier).

"Auteurship" always implies the artist's entire body of work, their "contribution". "Shtick" can capture the collision between what this artist does generally and what they do specifically in this particular song (or album, alternatively). For me it works better at explaining the kind of happy accidents that these lists are full of.

the only Ashanti songs i can really tolerate at all are "Only U" and maybe "Rain On Me" before I got sick of it. that era right before Beyone's solo career when Ashanti was pretty much the biggest female artist in R&B was pretty horrific imo.

One of the things I really like about about al's lists are how little regard they pay to the role of the artist outside of the individual song in question (this should be a goal for all singles lists IMO but many struggle with it).

thanks! although i must confess that i kinda was deliberate in putting R. Kelly on the list more than any other person, often in a supporting/producing role, and wanted very much assert his status imo as the #1 R&B auteur of the decade.

although it was a fun unintentional statement to have 4 times as many songs written by Bryan-Michael Cox as by Terius on the list too

again, this wasnt a matter of literal popularity but of approach & positioning w/r/t the neptunes

― holy lolson (deej), Sunday, November 7, 2010 1:42 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

also tim says "i agree with deej" before going on to outline yet another completely different argument that has more to do w/the-dream's intent than his popularity

― lex lex lex lex lex on the track BOW (lex pretend), Sunday, November 7, 2010 8:17 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i struggle to see what the 'confusing' thing is about what im saying & it seems like tim understood so

got you xp to tim

basically, initially al sorta slagged the-dream as 'the best thing to happen to R&B to a certain kind of R&B fan & internet critic stan' or whatever; i suggested that wasnt a fair summation of who he appealed to, his absence from this list just seemed weird to me

i love al's lists & dig getting his perspective on stuff. sometimes what bothers me about his takes on this stuff is it goes from the typical contrarianism that all of us on ilx (including myself obv) get into, into blanket rejections that dont fit the overarching vibe of 'al's list' as i conceive of it based on his taste. obv this is all interpretive. but so is every argument we make here

like, it seems to me that a MORE 'shipleyesque' move would be to choose a dream song that most dream stans sleep on, or that is atypical of his work. but eliminating him entirely just makes alarm bells go off or something, bcuz i feel like hes accomplished a lot for pop-R&B fan vibe that much of this list seems to float in

i dont see why lex is getting all defensive here. this isnt 'team popism,' we all like difft stuff for different reasons. its not a personal attack or something, & im interested in ppl's taste quirks -- pointing them out is not intended to offend

not really a blanket rejection if i say "Just Fine" is one of the best songs of the last decade or put E Red and LvM in my year-end list last year, etc. and as I alluded to earlier, "Rockin' That Shit" was very close to being on the list.

i mean i obviously think some of his work is good, even great, just not OMG BEST OF THE BEST.

i mean i hold T-Pain in higher esteem than The-Dream, but he's on this list in a supporting role once, one spot above The-Dream's appearance, and i don't mean that as a diss on him.

I don't see how deej gets to tell some dude to make some dude's list

like, it seems to me that a MORE 'shipleyesque' move would be to choose a dream song that most dream stans sleep on, or that is atypical of his work. but eliminating him entirely just makes alarm bells go off or something, bcuz i feel like hes accomplished a lot for pop-R&B fan vibe that much of this list seems to float in

― holy lolson (deej), Sunday, November 7, 2010 11:02 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

serious question: is there a The-Dream single from the '00s (i.e. his first 2 albums) that's a) doesn't feature a rapper, b) is atypical in any way, and c) could be considered 'slept on' among his ILM fans? i feel like you're describing something that doesn't exist.

ilm fans is what we're talking about now?? & yr talking just about his solo artist tracks?

i mean if we're talking about 'in the larger sweep of r&b fans' bcuz the 10 dudes who post in dream threads are all about every single dream song ever, then no. but in the wider public consciousness, something like 'purple kisses' or whatever is pretty slept on yeah

I don't see how deej gets to tell some dude to make some dude's list

― whiney trollins vs. hipsters (dayo), Sunday, November 7, 2010 10:08 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont see why ppl get so defensive about this stuff only when i do it. arent there a bunch of posts in this thread saying "its ridiculous you didnt include xyz"

this is a singles list, every song on the list was a hit on the R&B chart, most of them in the top 10. why are you bringing up "Purple Kisses"?

plus only about 5 songs written by The-Dream have charted as high as or higher than "Just Fine" on the R&B chart, so it's not that offbeat a choice to use as a token for his output.

who are these people that like the polow remix of "when i see u" better than the original

not that i'm begging to give props to midi mafia over polow, but

I'm surprised nobody's brought up the 2 Ne-Yo songs and another written by him (and another non-Ne-Yo Stargate production) on the list as my not very subtle way of addressing an old ILM debate

I think we all already knew your position on that al.

i dont see why ppl get so defensive about this stuff only when i do it. arent there a bunch of posts in this thread saying "its ridiculous you didnt include xyz"

― holy lolson (deej), Monday, November 8, 2010 12:29 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

mostly when people do it they're doing it from their own perspectives, not by putting themselves into the head of the other guy

who are these people that like the polow remix of "when i see u" better than the original

― J0rdan S., Monday, November 8, 2010 12:38 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

crazy

dream albums > ne yo singles > dream singles > songs written by dream > songs written by ne yo > ne yo albums

ha ha dayo that is definitely not true of standard operating procedure for ILM, which is pretty much always:

a) complain something is missing; then

b) ascribe devious motivation* to compiler for said absence.

* or alternatively submit as damning evidence of general cluelessness.

i'm not gonna bother to fit t-pain or r. kelly in there

people going "i would've had this on a list" vs what deej is doing are very much not the same thing, but really who cares

hmm I guess Tim, but a line like this

"into blanket rejections that dont fit the overarching vibe of 'al's list' as i conceive of it based on his taste. "

seems weird to me in a different way

it's like going "no no no, this is what should be on your list based on my very fixed conception of you" it's like deej has a mini ship living in his brain

r. kelly singles > dream albums > r. kelly albums > ne yo singles > t-pain singles > songs written by r. kelly > t-pain albums > dream singles > songs written by t-pain > songs written by dream > songs written by ne yo > ne yo albums

recommended reading: Billboard's top 100 songs of the decade on the hip hop/R&B chart

http://www.billboard.com/charts-decade-end#/charts-decade-end/r-b-hip-hop-songs?year=2009&begin=1&order=position

mostly when people do it they're doing it from their own perspectives, not by putting themselves into the head of the other guy

― whiney trollins vs. hipsters (dayo), Sunday, November 7, 2010 10:42 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wow i actually try to engage w/ his worldview & identifying distinct aspects of his taste & things that seem to contradict my view of them, ask for explanations

i dunno. this seems way more interesting to me than "wtf you didnt include 'crazy' by gnarles barkley, lol wtf"

"be without you" & "let me love you" would've been on my list

but by what metric is "like you'll never see me again" the #10 most successful r&b single of the decade

it's like going "no no no, this is what should be on your list based on my very fixed conception of you" it's like deej has a mini ship living in his brain

― whiney trollins vs. hipsters (dayo), Sunday, November 7, 2010 10:46 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you mean like, i pay attention to what he says about stuff & try to get a conceptual understanding of the constellation that makes up his taste?? wow thats crazy!!

i think they do it purely by chart peaks + peaks on chart (i.e. actual number of spins, recurrent airplay, iTunes sales, etc. don't figure in, only Billboard chart activity)

honestly i have no problem with deej's posts itt for the most part and we can probably stand to go easier on him here. i just don't know where he ever got the impression that any The-Dream solo single would be a lock for this list (OK, "Rockin'" was on my P&J ballot last year, but still)

this is a singles list, every song on the list was a hit on the R&B chart, most of them in the top 10. why are you bringing up "Purple Kisses"?

― lil bow bow (some dude), Sunday, November 7, 2010 10:33 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yah true but i didnt intend to make this entirely about his solo output, i was assuming we were talking about dream tracks / tracks dream had a hand in etc
as far as solo stuff i guess the one im thinking of that seems to fit in w/ your taste is 'falsetto,' its fairly atypical for the ones that other ppl here like, low on 'tic' high on 'songwriting,' a slow jam which is def more in the "R&B head" than the "wow fast car sounds like prince" indie fuxx territory and so seems sorta taylor made for your list.

or like "trading places" by usher. i dunno, i mean u know i probably agree w/ you about the level of the-dream stannery, i was anti-'love king' (the single) when it dropped, im not out there defending his lil jon track, etc ... but it seems like he covers enough bases that he would work for both R&B nerds, R&B pop fans, and cornie fuxx.

is basically what i thought i was saying upthread that apparently only tim could discern

'rockin that shit' is moving into dream fuxx territory, still in R&B auteur territory, but moving away from pop-R&B territory, so im sorta surprised that al is all about that one, but maybe this is just a quirk of taste

you mean like, i pay attention to what he says about stuff & try to get a conceptual understanding of the constellation that makes up his taste?? wow thats crazy!!

― holy lolson (deej), Monday, November 8, 2010 12:51 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

where it gets weird for me is when you start ascribing crypto-contrarian reasons for his decisions, like "obv. you must be doing this to prove some point" instead of considering that maybe he just really likes the song

kind of reduces personal taste into some calculus whereby you can automatically determine whether or not someone likes a song based on some bingo chart and if they don't they must have some contrarian reason, that's weird to me

in the Billboard top 100 I just linked, "Just Fine" is the 2nd biggest song written by The-Dream on the list, out of 5 (the others being Single Ladies, Bed, Suffocate and Rockin' That Shit). and considering that I went to pains to include the Beyonce song I feel "Single Ladies" rips off, my choice of "Just Fine" is actually pretty straightforward and canonical by popular R&B radio airplay standards.

i don't necessarily mind the posts talking about al's taste or w/e but this thing about 'tics' vs 'songwriting' or w/e the hell -- it's incredibly semantic and hard to parse and not v interesting

i do like "Trading Places" a lot, but it's decidedly Minor Usher and I filled that niche with "Same Girl" after covering the Major Usher bases. but "Falsetto" was really the song that put me off even listening to his albums for a while.

i don't necessarily mind the posts talking about al's taste or w/e but this thing about 'tics' vs 'songwriting' or w/e the hell -- it's incredibly semantic and hard to parse and not v interesting

― J0rdan S., Sunday, November 7, 2010 11:01 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is the part that tim was agreeing with, fwiw?

'just fine' sounds very un-dream to me is all -- but perhaps this is the most shipley calculus OF ALL

kind of reduces personal taste into some calculus whereby you can automatically determine whether or not someone likes a song based on some bingo chart and if they don't they must have some contrarian reason, that's weird to me

― whiney trollins vs. hipsters (dayo), Sunday, November 7, 2010 10:59 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont think im above this kind of thing or something dude

my taste works in similarly unpredictable / predictable ways

this is the part that tim was agreeing with, fwiw?

i think he means we're both boring.

'just fine' sounds very un-dream to me is all -- but perhaps this is the most shipley calculus OF ALL

― holy lolson (deej), Monday, November 8, 2010 12:12 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

the chorus has one word repeated over and over and punctuated with "HOOOOOO" -- even his somewhat atypical stuff is full of his tics

i mean bear in mind that a lot of this convo wouldn't be taking place if "Rockin' That Shit" was #50 instead of #51

i think he means we're both boring.

― Tim F, Sunday, November 7, 2010 11:13 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah -- that doesn't really make it any more less tedious to read

i mean bear in mind that a lot of this convo wouldn't be taking place if "Rockin' That Shit" was #50 instead of #51

― lil bow bow (some dude), Sunday, November 7, 2010 11:16 PM (53 seconds ago) Bookmark

if only you could've foreseen this

i knew how my act of aggression would be interpreted by the People's Republic of Teriustan and made sure my homeland was prepared for the worst case scenario

masochism

Was about to say "none", then I saw "Don't Stop The Music" which is a great pop song (although not very R&B to my ears).

lock thread

can that post be deleted

yeah that one's borderline enough that i seriously considered leaving it for the pop list.

xpost hey man i don't mind a little gier, as long as we don't draw him out into a 200-post debate

if your bartender uses a the-dream bottle opener, does geir tip him?

yeah personally i don't see how "don't stop the music" is more r&b than pop and "no letting go" or "like glue" is more pop than r&b

dancehall feels like a totally difft thing to me

& unlike nina sky or uhohhhhh uh ohhhhhhh sean paul is dancehall

well i would agree that dancehall is a totally diff thing if ship was making a specific dancehall list

i agree it'd be nice if i knew dancehall well enough to do a whole list, but i don't. and it'd be silly if i did the whole rap/R&B crossover list to clear the way for a 'pure' R&B list and then ended up throwing some dancehall songs in there.

it's not like we're alex in nyc here

Nice.

[I know this doesn't add anything to the conversation, but I just wanted to thank Al for making those lists and J0rdan for posting the zips; super appreciated]

no prob! i'm glad they've stirred up conversation and am grateful to j0rdan for making the threads and the zips because i'd otherwise probably have been shy about linking them on ILM myself.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

reordered list by magnitude of R&B chart hit, smallest to biggest:

34. Rihanna - "Don't Stop The Music" (2007)
20. Justin Timberlake - “Rock Your Body” (2003)
27. R. Kelly - "A Woman's Threat" (2000)
46. Tamia – “Officially Missing You” (2003)
32. Prince - “Call My Name” (2004)
41. Ne-Yo - "Closer" (2008)
16. Nivea f/ R. Kelly - “Laundromat” (2003)
28. Ginuwine - "There It Is" (2001)
43. 'N Sync - “Gone” (2001)
13. Beyonce - "Get Me Bodied" (2007)
7. Mya - "Case of the Ex" (2000)
49. Aaliyah – “Come Over” (2003)
29. Amerie - "Why Don't We Fall In Love?" (2002)
39. Faith Evans - "You Gets No Love" (2001)
25. Tank - "Maybe I Deserve" (2001)
9. Aaliyah - "More Than A Woman" (2002)
38. Isley Brothers f/ R. Kelly and Chante Moore - "Contagious" (2001)
48. R. Kelly f/ Usher - "Same Girl" (2007)
18. John Legend - "Ordinary People" (2005)
22. Mary J. Blige - "Just Fine" (2007)
10. Anthony Hamilton - "Charlene" (2004)
40. Keyshia Cole - "Love" (2006)
12. Sunshine Anderson - "Heard It All Before" (2001)
36. Mario - "Just A Friend 2002" (2002)
24. Janet Jackson - "Doesn't Really Matter" (2000)
14. Ne-Yo - "So Sick" (2006)
4. D'Angelo - "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" (2000)
35. Musiq Soulchild - "Halfcrazy" (2002)
33. Michael Jackson - "Butterflies" (2001)
45. Chris Brown - "Yo (Excuse Me Miss)" (2005)
6. Usher - "U Don't Have To Call" (2002)
50. 112 - "Peaches & Cream" (2001)
37. Sisqo - "Thong Song" (2000)
44. Destiny's Child - "Bootylicious" (2001)
30. Maxwell - "Pretty Wings" (2009)
15. Fantasia - "When I See U" (2007)
47. Carl Thomas - "I Wish" (2000)
19. Robin Thicke - "Lost Without You" (2006)
1. Ciara - "Promise" (2006)
8. Monica - “So Gone” (2003)
2. R. Kelly - “Step In The Name of Love (Remix)" (2003)
3. Amerie - "1 Thing" (2005)
42. Tweet f/ Missy Elliott - "Oops (Oh My)" (2002)
17. Alicia Keys - "If I Ain't Got You" (2004)
5. Alicia Keys - “You Don’t Know My Name” (2003)
21. Jamie Foxx f/ T-Pain - "Blame It" (2009)
31. Usher - "Confessions Part II" (2004)
26. Beyonce - "Irreplaceable" (2006)
11. Mariah Carey - “We Belong Together” (2005)
23. Usher - "U Got It Bad" (2001)

surprised to see "more than a woman" so far down there

well, 82% of the list hit top 10 on the R&B chart, so all but the very end of the list were pretty sizable urban radio hits

16 #1's, 8 #2's, 7 #3's, 2 #4's, 8 more in the top 10, 9 outside the top 10

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

argh

Rihanna? Really?

yeah that's dumb but i was groaning at "1 thing" predictably walking it - then again i've never loved that song or anything

my top 3 being more or less the top 3 of the results is pretty remarkable!

multiple votes for "Thong Song" is pretty weird.

i voted for kells

i wonder if "thong song" votes were trolly or not

don't want to throw corny voters an easy one the way the Yeah Yeah Yeahs got all the votes in the rock list poll

too late

― holy lolson (deej), Saturday, November 6, 2010 6:34 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

guess this was otm :/

i mean, nothing against "1 thing" obv, or "rehab" for that matter, but over twice the number of votes of any other? nah.

this is the first time the winner of one of these polls has actually ranked in the top 10 of my list, so i have no complaints.

i mean it can only be 'corny' to like "1 Thing" in the most abstract self-hating paranoid sense.

lol is that the same one that has u hating on ignition rmx, the-dream solo cuts, etc

lol why are you harping so much on the-dream's solo singles -- dude is totally an albums artist

"ignition" tho yea, amongst others

my biggest gripe with snubbing the-dream to shine the spotlight on kells is i just don't personally care about either "a woman's threat" or "same girl". i mean i'm cool with pronouncing him more important/better than terius but to me "i wish" and "ignition" (either og or rmx) are much better singles. so i understand it's a personal thing but if "rockin that shit" and "shawty is da shit!" have to be shut out i'd just rather it wasn't for usher's second gayest song

lmbo

also like jordan i had never knowingly heard "charlene" before this and it's my jam now, thanks ship

lol is that the same one that has u hating on ignition rmx, the-dream solo cuts, etc

― whats goin on witchu iron mane (deej), Monday, November 15, 2010 1:32 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

deej can u rank the slow jams on this list since you told me one time that I must hate ballads if I don't like "Falsetto"?

I'm a Kells stan = I'm repping for lesser known tracks. is that really so hard to understand?

man "same girl" is seriously the shit -- the back and forth in the verses is so creative & hilarious -- i would've gone with "i wish" over "a woman's threat" personally but i can be a bit of a sap

yeah...TP2.com has such a wealth of good singles, it was tough to figure out what to include/exclude

yeah i'm not baggin on you or anything, i know it's your list which is why i didn't give you shit upthread - just sayin what my reaction was xxp

[R. Kelly]
She drives a black Durango license plate say Angel tattoo on her ankle plus she's making pesos.
Gotta crib on Peachtree, right on 17th street and I call her Te Te.
[Usher]
Wait a minute hold on dog. Do she got a crib? By the waffle house?
Do she got a beauty mark on the left side of her mouth?
Went to Georgia Tech? Works for TBS? Man I can't believe this shit. Damn!!

^^this shit is so illustrative & idiosyncratic -- dunno how you could hate

deej can u rank the slow jams on this list since you told me one time that I must hate ballads if I don't like "Falsetto"?

― deej otm (some dude), Monday, November 15, 2010 2:10 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

change the subject much? pt is you are all abt hating obvious songs except when its amerie for some reason

given that more than half of the songs on the list charted #3 or higher on the R&B chart i'd say there's plenty of "obvious" on here. where did i say the whole point of this is to zag when someone wants me to zig?

lol

pt is you are all abt hating obvious songs except when its amerie for some reason

― whats goin on witchu iron mane (deej), Monday, November 15, 2010 3:28 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is an awful pt

deej do you actually hate "1 Thing"?

i wanna know what deej thinks is an appropriate balance of canon picks & "personal taste" picks, just for future reference when we're all making lists

The R. Kelly songs here were new to me but all three are great (especially 'Same Girl') so I'm glad to have them brought to my attention... In fact there are a load of things here I had either a) never heard or b) completely forgotten about. Anyway I gave 'Why Don't We Fall In Love' its solitary vote but '1 Thing' is fine by me.

how the hell do j0rdan/kell not know "charlene"?

i actually had heard it bcuz of listening club but i didn't remember it but yeah i hadn't heard it when it came out

i don't really have much of a memory of him as a solo artist at all tbh -- really just from the nappy roots song

i mean it can only be 'corny' to like "1 Thing" in the most abstract self-hating paranoid sense.

― deej otm (some dude), Monday, November 15, 2010 7:51 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

um dude im just pointing out yr aesthetic hypocrisy here, not trying to delineate rules. its just funny to hear al jump on the "what - dost thou hate fun??" train at this pt when hes typically more in the crotchety contrarian lane. duh.

lol @ j0rdan changing sides in this discussion tho!

given that more than half of the songs on the list charted #3 or higher on the R&B chart i'd say there's plenty of "obvious" on here. where did i say the whole point of this is to zag when someone wants me to zig?

― deej otm (some dude), Monday, November 15, 2010 2:30 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh plz. obv charting popularity is not the same as ilx popularity, vis a vis 'one thing' being an obvious choice.

not really -- you're not really actually any potentially interesting questions about al's taste right now

i disagree

i think its interesting what obv picks hes cool w/ & which ones hes not. i guess i can pose it in a less confrontational way but his aesthetic guiding principles w/r/t this stuff still feels somewhat ambiguous

"ignition" tho yea, amongst others

― thomas smangalter (J0rdan S.), Monday, November 15, 2010 12:34 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

I adore the original "Ignition" and think of the more popular remix as being just okay, I've articulated that view on ILM about a hundred times in the last 7 years.

"aesthetic hypocrisy" would be a very interesting concept if it's wasn't absolute mumbo jumbo

im not saying you're contradicting yourself

"aesthetic hypocrisy" would be a very interesting concept if it's wasn't absolute mumbo jumbo

― some dude, Monday, November 15, 2010 3:49 PM (17 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

its not. i guess its somewhat vague. but it comes down to a seeming arbitrariness that you dont always explain in posts like the one i quoted -- essentially a 'do you hate fun' post, but expressed as if it spoke some truth about '1 thing'. but if anyone said that to you about 'ignition,' you would be deeply cynical

yeah i'm just saying if "how dare you snub Ignition" is the most concrete argument you've got at this point then you still haven't brought up anything worthwhile to discuss (xpost)

deej, you never answered my question -- do you hate "1 Thing" or is this just a stupid game you're playing about it becoming lame by association?

youre totally missing the point argh

im not criticizing either song or defending either song -- its about the meaninglessness of statements like the one i quoted

i mean it can only be 'corny' to like "1 Thing" in the most abstract self-hating paranoid sense.

― deej otm (some dude), Monday, November 15, 2010 7:51 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no, it isnt

ignition was an example of a song where i could say the same of you

gimme that toot, toot, lemme give you that beef, beef

i guess it is kind of mean tho to joke about al never using hyperbole, then giving him shit for taking a strong stance lol

omg M@tt

Speaking for myself, I find it hard to imagine hating "1 Thing" but I totally get annoyed by the extent to which it's a go-to tune for people who will happily ignore or disregard lots of similar (and often slightly better) stuff. I've always been irritated by the "three tunes per year" rule lots of people I know appear to apply to pop music, notwithstanding the fact that the beneficiaries of this rule are often very good tunes indeed.

Like, it made sense to me that "1 Thing" was near the top of Al's list, but it jars that its votes double the number 2 placegetter.

I don't think this is a self-hating paranoid stance. But maybe it is?

i think its interesting what obv picks hes cool w/ & which ones hes not. i guess i can pose it in a less confrontational way but his aesthetic guiding principles w/r/t this stuff still feels somewhat ambiguous

― whats goin on witchu iron mane (deej), Monday, November 15, 2010 3:44 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

jfc it's called "liking" some songs and "not liking" others. everybody's goddam "aesthetic guiding principles" are somewhat ambiguous unless your geir. and even then.

sadly we'll never know if ppl liked "1 thing" for the right reasons :(

another layer of weirdness to '1 thing' is that among ahem serious listeners it was celebrated as much for rich harrison as for amerie, but he kinda went nowhere after that. so much for auteurism i guess, in his case.

"unless you're geir", forgive me

can we talk about Rihanna instead and how gratifying it is to see her best single to come in 3rd here

also was hoping Ne-Yo would be higher

jfc it's called "liking" some songs and "not liking" others. everybody's goddam "aesthetic guiding principles" are somewhat ambiguous unless your geir. and even then.

― goole, Monday, November 15, 2010 4:10 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i think that statement was misleading bcuz it implied i was objecting to his actual specific TASTE rather than what i saw as hypocrisy in his justification for that taste -- that only someone being paranoid would hate this ilx-popular song is a very un-shipley thing to say!

well you keep fighting the good fight then

i mean it can only be 'corny' to like "1 Thing" in the most abstract self-hating paranoid sense.

― deej otm (some dude), Monday, November 15, 2010 7:51 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

fwiw i did not really mean this in a "THIS SONG IS UNDENIABLE AND IF YOU DISAGREE YOU ARE A SAD DELUDED LITTLE MAN" WAY -- i meant it more like to me someone voting for Yeah Yeah Yeahs in my rock list, or my theoretical example of if i'd included Winehouse in this list, is missing the 'point' or just gravitating to the "one of these things is not like the other" hipster entry point. relatively speaking, "1 Thing" is more toward that end of the scale than most other songs on this list, but I loved it as soon as I heard it and was one of the first people hyping it up as the best thing since sliced bread at the time, and I feel like if I personally did an about face on the song 5 years later, it WOULD be in a paranoid overly reactionary narcissism of small differences way.

haha didn't mean to capitalize WAY

ok, you keep defending a dude who called us all 'paranoid' for thinking that 1 thing is being a lil bit overrated! xxp

thank u al that clarification makes more sense than i how i read it initially!

i still dont get why u dudes jumped down my throat before al's itt

i just went to the trouble of looking up the Stylus year-end tracks list that deej and i both contributed to in 2005, and "1 Thing" isn't on his ballot, so i'll at least stop asking him if he ever liked it much at all in the first place and give him credit that he isn't pretending to hate it or doing a 180 on it on principle.

i dont hate it btw, i like it pretty well. more than 'crazy in love' which i thought was more overrated for an ilx canon choice

i thought rich harrison's jlo song from the same era was underrated, even if she was the worst singer of the three by a huge distance

There are very few songs on this Earth as instantly engaging as "Crazy In Love" though, so you're going to have a difficult time making a solid "that's an overrated song" argument (not that it's impossible; the verses for all intents and purposes might as well not exist)

imo the drums on "1 Thing" are more head-turning than the "Crazy In Love" horns, but obviously they're both pretty attention commanding intros

i still dont get why u dudes jumped down my throat before al's itt

― whats goin on witchu iron mane (deej), Monday, November 15, 2010 4:22 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

because al's whole post explaining things to you was quite obv to the rest of us?

deej is truly ilm's most sensitive hardman

btw can someone throw a rope ladder down here i'm lodged in deej's esophagus and can't seem to climb out

reminds me of the kids in the hall sketch "skoora the gentle shark" (xpost)

haha @ "the sensitive hardman"

because al's whole post explaining things to you was quite obv to the rest of us?

― thomas smangalter (J0rdan S.), Monday, November 15, 2010 4:36 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

how is it 'obvious' -- he never even implies that theres something about one thing that makes its corny fuxxitude irrelevent to him, and hes obv a dude who incorporates corny fuxx-itude into his opinions (as am i, no judgement)

i think yr being way kneejerk DEEJ IS SO RIDICULOUS here

idk that original statement of his def seems kinda strangely defensive about anyone thinking 1 thing could possibly be an indie fuxxor pick, the way i read it!

I gotta say - some dude otm re: "a woman's threat" placing on this list, it's a masterpiece and would prob be rank even higher on my list, and it definitely one of R. Kelly's best singles, prob my favorite actually, and it is way better than "Ignition (Remix)" which doesn't even rate in r. Kelly's top singles of the decade imo, that song is grossly overrated and overhyped

and I'm not even being knee jerk about it either, the song was good when it came out but it was just one in a serious of great r. kelly singles, don't get why that song has the rep it does AT ALL

haha @ "the sensitive hardman"

― overtheseas aeroplanes I have flown (k3vin k.), Monday, November 15, 2010 4:44 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im not being 'sensitive' im appealing to the collective sense of reason that seems to disappear & turn into OMG DEEJ IS SOO CRAZY any time i disagree abt something

amy winehouse - rehab/you know i'm no good/back to black

i like "Rehab" and thought about including it in the name of variety, but that's one respect in which the ilx polls have kind of influenced these lists -- don't want to throw corny voters an easy one the way the Yeah Yeah Yeahs got all the votes in the rock list poll

― lil bow bow (some dude), Saturday, November 6, 2010 11:16 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

deej this is the original post you challenged and brought up "1 Thing" w/r/t -- I just don't think what I'm saying here applies to Amerie, sorry

ok yeah i mean i still disagree about that, i think 'one thing' is a p obvious one (& the results kinda bear this out?)

"Rehab" is, in terms of U.S. R&B radio, kind of a niche token retro alternative U.K. blip, whereas "1 Thing" was a big beloved hit that helped turn its producer into a brand name (of course, in other contexts you could pretty much reverse those descriptions)

i never said "1 Thing" isn't obvious. is "obvious" a liability in and of itself now? was I supposed to be more clever with my top 3?

no i dont care -- youre the one who made the rule about 'rehab' being obvious not me!

i think that 'rehab' was a big enough cultural thing (lots of 'actual R&B' fans i knew were into it & just treated it as an R&B song like any other) that it doesnt really feel like more of a fuxx pic to me. esp since, compared to '1 thing,' it was pretty underrated on ilx in particular! basically i dont see rehab as a particularly 'corny' pick, & def not moreso than '1 thing'

didnt 1 thing not even chart as high?

I'd agree "1 Thing" is kind of the corny option here, but otoh it is a respectable #1 choice so I can't really annoyed w/ it winning this poll - the margin by which it won is kind of eyeroll-worthy bit still

i just pulled that album out again a week or so ago coincidentally. it's really not that great! helluva fluke imo

then again i never got around to hearing the rest of what amerie's done

amerie's first two albums r classics

i just listened to "step in the name of love" on youtube, it made me feel really grown and sexy. glad i voted for it. iirc the only song on this thread that is dress code enforced.

"Rehab" is, in terms of U.S. R&B radio, kind of a niche token retro alternative U.K. blip, whereas "1 Thing" was a big beloved hit that helped turn its producer into a brand name (of course, in other contexts you could pretty much reverse those descriptions)

Ha ha yeah you def. could in Australia, not that that counts for anything.

I'd agree "1 Thing" is kind of the corny option here, but otoh it is a respectable #1 choice so I can't really annoyed w/ it winning this poll - the margin by which it won is kind of eyeroll-worthy bit still

^^^ yeah this is how I feel basically. It's not so much how many people voted for "1 Thing" but how few people thought it wasn't number 1 on this list. I expect consensus to build around "great albums" to some extent but with songs I'd like to think our tastes don't actually consolidate to quite this degree, esp. when Al's list is filled with so many awesome songs.

"1 Thing" was #8 on the Hot 100 and #1 on the R&B chart -- "Rehab" was #9 on the Hot 100 and didn't even chart on the U.S. R&B charts

then again i never got around to hearing the rest of what amerie's done

First album in particular is incredibly classic, IMO at least a third of the tunes are better than "1 Thing" but I'm sure many here will disagree with that assessment.

ok, i'll keep an eye out

to be clear, i'm not a casual fan, i'm a lazy one

"Rehab" did, however, get to #32 on the Modern Rock chart. "1 Thing," amazingly, never got on the rock charts. (xpost)

I totally get annoyed by the extent to which it's a go-to tune for people who will happily ignore or disregard lots of similar (and often slightly better) stuff

this sums it up for me - it, through no fault of its own, is often a token pick for people who seem to have no interest in even hearing, let alone enthusing about, a) similar-sounding rich harrison productions, b) digging deeper into amerie's own discography, c) often not being that interested in any other r&b songs. and will in fact use "1 thing" as a stick with which to actively dismiss a), b) and c). so i'm just reacting to having seen all the above come up so frequently, really - personally i don't think it's the best in any of those categories.

"a woman's threat" is a masterpiece, yes.

you guys sound like grateful dead fans "no man you really need to hear the live 85 show at somerset"

what's wrong with just digging the pop music you hear on the radio and see in videos or hear in clubs? isn't that kinda what pop music is about?

also "be careful" by sparkle always seems like the better version of "a woman's threat"

you guys sound like grateful dead fans "no man you really need to hear the live 85 show at somerset"

what's wrong with just digging the pop music you hear on the radio and see in videos or hear in clubs? isn't that kinda what pop music is about?

Given the chart success of so many of the other tunes on al's list - in many cases well in excess of "1 Thing" - I don't think you can say that people disproportionately voting for "1 Thing" is about "just digging the pop music you hear on the radio and see in videos or hear in clubs". If fuxxitude was in fact directly proportionate to popular success or omnipresence then it wouldn't even be recognisable as fuxxitude.

what's wrong with just digging the pop music you hear on the radio and see in videos or hear in clubs? isn't that kinda what pop music is about?

i've never really been down w/the idea that enjoyment of pop needs to be tied to its success/ubiquity, which kinda implies that it can't be enjoyable and quality in itself

"be careful" is EVEN BETTER than "a woman's threat"!

lol, why isn't anyone directly addressing the elephant in the room, namely that the ILX demographic is self-selectingly slanted towards being as indiecentric as possible regardless of actual genre

Because it's a

http://www.4x4earth.com.au/forum/images/posts/747119_can-o-worms.gif

that has been opened many times before.

i'm gonna be real w/y'all

i listened to wowee zowee this weekend.

on vinyl.

it's nearly EOY list time anyway

"Rehab" did, however, get to #32 on the Modern Rock chart. "1 Thing," amazingly, never got on the rock charts. (xpost)

― some dude, Monday, November 15, 2010 5:15 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

imo & based purely on anecdotal evidence, this has more to do w/ conservative radio programming & the issue of r@c3 as it relates to billboard position than anything related to popularity w/ an audience. i mean its not like R&B fans werent welcoming saadiq's similar record when he dropped it after hers.

further im not even sure i buy the 'fuxx' argument on amy w. bcuz she became a mainstream countercultural icon! trendy, non 'indie fuxx' people were fucking w/ her. maybe it was partly bcuz she had this external drama going on, but ppl wouldnt have cared if she didnt have successful songs too.

and obv this is even more true on ilx

fuxx not fuxxing with her, i mean

further im not even sure i buy the 'fuxx' argument on amy w. bcuz she became a mainstream countercultural icon! trendy, non 'indie fuxx' people were fucking w/ her. maybe it was partly bcuz she had this external drama going on, but ppl wouldnt have cared if she didnt have successful songs too.

and obv this is even more true on ilx

I think this is in part because fuxxitude has its own self-hating moment when something gets too big.

I consider "Rehab" comparable with "Crazy" (or "F*** You") in that regard: these tunes divide fuxx down the middle because some of them can actually see the nostalgia button being pushed in a way that is much less obvious/straightforward (and so easier to self-justify) in a tune like "1 Thing".

those poor fuxx

would just like to point out that everyone was all "YESSS! SCORE ONE POPISM!! SMELL YA LATER INDIE ROCK BWAHAHAHAHAA!" when 1 thing placed first on the 05-09 poll and all the accusations & infighting that has devolved itt due to it winning this poll p blatantly exposes the manifold levels of paranoia & self-consciousness going on in yr minds

everyone posting itt has a cool & good ilm presence but this times like these things get so rmde it's exasperating

Isn't "manifold levels of paranoia & self-consciousness going on in yr minds" a kind of OTT way of describing people being disappointed the scores weren't a little more evenly spread?

It seems to me that the moment anyone ever says anything like "it's a shame so many votes are concentrated on the obvious choice(s) in this poll" in a poll like this people are quick to accuse the speaker(s) of being paranoid, self-hating etc.

Is it so important that people be protected from a suggestion that they check stuff out?

I voted 'The Corrections' my number 1 pick in the 00s Book Poll so I am no stranger to being a corny fuxx, but I wasn't hurt when other people were annoyed by its success.

idk dude to me the implied tone of this is not very much a suggestion to check stuff out & more about pitting yourself against some vague unidentified corny indie fuck enemy, & establishing for the millionth time that you're against it. & just like, the way corny indie fux is this malleable abstract thing that changes in diff contexts, like in the decade poll it was lcd soundsystem and mia vs amerie, now amerie is the corny fuck pick -- like i GET it but it's kind of immature and unnecessary

its not about "oh i hate these frat boys!" its about getting annoyed w/ received wisdom & lazy thinking

(xpost) & like deej's whole initial accusation is assuming so many levels of hyperself-awareness & barely imperceptible manoeuvres b/w obvious picks and unobvious ones.

also to get back to results, like more than 75% of votes were for a song other than 1 thing -- so what is the complaint really? that there isn't a similarly big cluster of votes around another song? what song should it have been, then? over half the songs on the list got at least one vote

These days I tend to use "corny fuxx" rather than "corny indie fuxx" because it is a malleable abstract thing that changes in diff contexts. I'm a corny fuxx all the time: it's pretty much an inescapable property of being a music listener.

Trying to restrict a concept like that to use in one context only is like trying to restrict the use of "avant garde", "populist", "snobbish", "underground", "conservative", "generic" - these words are pretty much by definition relational and context-dependent.

man i could be grappling with the tim f impenetrable wall of reasonableness all night at this rate

admit yr guys's stasticial analysis here was weak though

its not about "oh i hate these frat boys!" its about getting annoyed w/ received wisdom & lazy thinking

now you know how I feel when you guys are going nuts over Waka

i dont see the connection

sam otm itt

admit yr guys's stasticial analysis here was weak though

― haute couture wolf gang frill them all (samosa gibreel), Monday, November 15, 2010 8:15 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont think saying 'amerie is overrated in this poll' is weak. :shrug:

i was more adressing what tim said here

It's not so much how many people voted for "1 Thing" but how few people thought it wasn't number 1 on this list.

as i noted, more than 3/4 of people who voted did not vote for 1 thing

contrary to whatever al or j0rdan were accusing me of the other day, im not / havent been trying to be ethan p redux or something on ilx. i mean, obv im not funny the way he is. but instead i sorta feel like im going for more of the intangible questioning-assumptions vibe i get from my favorite posters as far as discussing music -- tim, moonship, rtc, ethan, miccio, shipley even, etc. -- ppl who make u confront expectations & received wisdom, etc. this sort of thinking is critical to why i valued ilx's music threads

i like the idea that we can get aggy about consensus! thats what ppl have been doing on ilx since i started posting here 7 yrs ago. i like that they make u question these kinds of assumptions about what the best track is, that puncture the kind of insular bubble that develops around little e-communities like this one, so ppl start thinking that the consensus of their group happens to have a more righteous/thoughtful take on 'the truth' than other ppl. & when a song that obvi has a corny fuxx / crit following does overwhelmingly well, i wd be disappointed in ilx if everyone was just like "results otm" frankly.

thats what ppl have been doing on ilx since i started posting here 7 yrs ago.

i mean, obv they were doing it before i got here too, but thats what kept me in music discussions that long (on & off)

im glad that m@tt can say "u know what, that esham record ethan recommended was as good as odd future," or that i can argue that jacka is better than pill, or that shipley can say ignition remix is overrated (even if hes wrong). anyone defending overwhelming poll results is defending the power structure, man. fuck the police

im out

Okay arguing about the numbers is gonna bore everyone fast but:

as i noted, more than 3/4 of people who voted did not vote for 1 thing

this still seems very low to me when there are 50 nearly-all-IMO-totally-excellent songs here!

I'm kinda annoyed by any poll with so many options where number 1 choice gets more than twice as much as number 2 choice. Even if I voted for that number 1 choice.

In a poll like this where the list is pretty thoughtful and interesting that ultimately irritates me more. I guess there's no particular connection between the quirks of al's list and what others ultimately choose, but it was nice to see so many people in this thread checking out songs they hadn't heard and loving them.

I know it's in part a function of the polling that it becomes a bit winner takes all (e.g. lots of people mentioned "Case of the Ex" above but it gets a zero here; presumably some people heard "Charlene" for the first time and adored it, but it still fell a bit behind "1 Thing" in their estimation) but you gotta admit it makes the whole polling process radically more boring.

I probably would have much more enjoyed a poll where people voted for the best song on al's list they hadn't heard beforehand.

now you know how I feel when you guys are going nuts over Waka

― Baron Strange of Knockin (DJP), Monday, November 15, 2010 11:08 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont see the connection

― whats goin on witchu iron mane (deej), Monday, November 15, 2010 11:10 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

actually i do want to say, beyond writing my review, im not really about convincing djp (or anyone who isnt that way inclined) that he needs to be listening to more dread head gun-toting rappers. its just like ... beyond making the case for my perspective, i can totally see why lots of ppl would be put off by this! dan disagreeing w/ us in that thread didnt result in any kind of clusterfuck either! no one called him out for daring to question the consensus. i mean, what he said he didnt like about it was a lot of the stuff we dug about it, so its hard to say he was being disingenuous or dishonest or falling into 'corny fuxx'-iness or something.

waka has an understandably niche appeal. just like im probably not gonna be dropping 'live by the gun' when/if i have a wedding

*reconsiders*

live by the ban/ i'ma die by the ban

i still have no idea what waka has to do with "received wisdom" or "lazy thinking" tho

I feel like all these arguments about overwhelming fuxx consensus would be diffused if we could rewrite the ILX poll code to do weighted polls. but that's never going to happen, so we're trapped in our fuxxing paranoia

you can believe 1 thing is the best of these songs but also have love for the rest of the 49 too. and I hate it when people do strategic voting in polls, like "I'm gonna vote for this song to make sure it gets repped" even if it's not their most favorite on the list. maybe these things work better as ballots but who's gonna receive an count them all?

you can believe 1 thing is the best of these songs but also have love for the rest of the 49 too.

yeah I acknowledged this above, my issue (and it really was a very minor one which now appears to be much more passionate than it is) is with the result being boring rather than the people who voted for it - I agree that weighted polls would go a long way to fixing the problem. Alt. I'd be interested to know what voters' second choices were or would have been (if not already disclosed upthread).

e.g. lots of people mentioned "Case of the Ex" above but it gets a zero here

lol p sure im the only poster that mentioned it & i just forgot to vote cuz i actually almost never vote itp

1 thing is p boring imo but i dont really care if other ppl like it. just more proof that most ilm posters have shit taste in music.

i was borderline annoyed that sum1 voted for 'laundromat' gawd that song is awwwful u wanna talk about corny

cote is TEH NUTS imo

its not about "oh i hate these frat boys!" its about getting annoyed w/ received wisdom & lazy thinking

― whats goin on witchu iron mane (deej), Monday, November 15, 2010 9:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I can't speak for anyone else, but I live in a radio market that picked up very early on "1 Thing" and I loved it before I saw anyone on the internet or in real life talk about it. can I just like something that's popular, or ends up popular, as a gut reaction without it becoming "received wisdom"?

i'm glad Lamp has finally thrown down the gauntlet as someone who outright dislikes "1 Thing," just to stop this from feeling like a bunch of people who have no real problem with it as a piece of music playing social studies head games around it.

dude theres nothing wrong w/ liking 'one thing' yeesh

this thread isn't exactly doing a lot for my appreciation of the song

just more proof that most ilm posters have shit taste in music

accuse enough people so nobody can take it personal - good tactics

dude theres nothing wrong w/ liking 'one thing' yeesh

― whats goin on witchu iron mane (deej), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 10:28 AM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

uh then why did we have literally dozens of posts back and forth about you saying it's corny to like that song and me saying it's not?

or is "corny" one of those value neutral words like "dated"

lol are you really siding w/ whiney on that one too -- obv its corny to all vote the same song in a poll - not corny to like a song -- i dont see whats so hard to understand about that

what's hard to understand is the "obv" part

i think we've explained it the best we can at this pt? im not sure what more there is to say. but, thats not what al was arguing with regardless

Like, the thing you are missing/glossing over is that you are talking about a group of people who have been bullshitting with each other about music on this board for 5-10 years, and in some cases years before that; of course a community is going to form out of that and consensus picks will arise because enthusiasm is infectious. People generally want to enjoy themselves, and if a person/group of people whose taste you respect is/are going apeshit over something, the likelihood that you will give it more of a chance than usual increases. You are essentially calling common observable human behavior "corny" for no particular reason (Al's hypothetical "I desire to be the specialist of the special snowflakes" reason is a guess at why).

lol are you really siding w/ whiney on that one too -- obv its corny to all vote the same song in a poll - not corny to like a song -- i dont see whats so hard to understand about that

for a dude that values 'confronting expectations & received wisdom' idg how u can post this shit. like leave the reactionary avalanche of hashtag neuroses to whiney et al. & think abt 'the song' instead?

i dont h8 1 thing but i dont particularly care for it her voice isnt enough & the beat is slighter than it fronts. also its boring i think - its about 15 secs. of attention-grabbing 'urban car commercial' and then three odd minutes of the same trick

59 people voted for 28 different songs in this poll, and the most popular song only got 11 votes over the next most popular getting 5. as the person who made the list, I'm personally pretty satisfied by that variety of opinions. I'm sorry you aren't!

i mean we all knew "1 Thing" was gonna win, but if i had to guess i probably woulda thought with more than 18% of the vote!

i dont h8 1 thing but i dont particularly care for it her voice isnt enough & the beat is slighter than it fronts. also its boring i think - its about 15 secs. of attention-grabbing 'urban car commercial' and then three odd minutes of the same trick

I can see this argument but I think the introduction of synths on the chorus and bridge as the song goes on elevates it out of that niche

yeah..the brilliance of Rich Harrison's productions in that vein is totally in how they seem like one-dimensional percussive bangers at first and then you get all these warm keys layering onto the second half of the song

"Crazy In Love" does the same thing, only with Beyonce's voice instead of synths

for a dude that values 'confronting expectations & received wisdom' idg how u can post this shit. like leave the reactionary avalanche of hashtag neuroses to whiney et al. & think abt 'the song' instead?

i dont h8 1 thing but i dont particularly care for it her voice isnt enough & the beat is slighter than it fronts. also its boring i think - its about 15 secs. of attention-grabbing 'urban car commercial' and then three odd minutes of the same trick

― .gif of the magi (Lamp), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 10:36 AM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeesh so sensitive abt the word 'corny.' fine replace with 'predictable,' 'boring' whatever

Like, the thing you are missing/glossing over is that you are talking about a group of people who have been bullshitting with each other about music on this board for 5-10 years, and in some cases years before that; of course a community is going to form out of that and consensus picks will arise because enthusiasm is infectious. People generally want to enjoy themselves, and if a person/group of people whose taste you respect is/are going apeshit over something, the likelihood that you will give it more of a chance than usual increases. You are essentially calling common observable human behavior "corny" for no particular reason (Al's hypothetical "I desire to be the specialist of the special snowflakes" reason is a guess at why).

― Baron Strange of Knockin (DJP), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 10:33 AM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is this pulling senority thing?? im not new here ive been here that long. im saying theres just as long of a trend of 'ppl complaining about consensus' as there is 'consensus'. so i dont see what the problem is here

People complain about consensus when they don't agree with it, not for the sake of complaining about consensus.

...or if they think a song is good but being overrated. how is this even an argument?

its not an argument ur just retarded?

lost in the wasteland of brand positioning

thnx for adding so much to the discussion

ur entire 'argument' (i guess) seems completely relational - its okay to really love a song but its boring/corny/incorrect to love a song lots of other ppl like, or the wrong ppl like, or to love it for the 'wrong reasons' - and amorphous bcuz none of the terms u use have much 'meaning'. also i just thought it was lol that you keep stunting for critical deconstruction of received wisdom when so many of your posts seem to rely on a bunch of 'lazy assumptions' about who likes what and why they like it

not going to caveat shit like w/e ur just u

but ite need to just 'space out' on this shit... music is more than context... peaced out

who cares

lost in the wasteland of brand positioning

― .gif of the magi (Lamp), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 12:41 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

truth bomb over here

i dont h8 1 thing but i dont particularly care for it her voice isnt enough & the beat is slighter than it fronts. also its boring i think - its about 15 secs. of attention-grabbing 'urban car commercial' and then three odd minutes of the same trick

I can see this argument but I think the introduction of synths on the chorus and bridge as the song goes on elevates it out of that niche

― Baron Strange of Knockin (DJP), Tuesday, 16 November 2010 16:39 (2 hours ago) Permalink

This all kind of ignores that there's a song there, and not just a production? It's a pretty good one. It might be about getting her pussy ate.

The lyrics are the least interesting thing about "1 Thing" IMO; in that vein, I'd go for "Oops (Oh My)" every time

i like get right by j.lo a lot more as an example of this exact song btw and it actually holds up more than 1thing but then i always feel like im never sure which stop to get off at on the contrary bandwagon

lost in the wasteland of brand positioning

― .gif of the magi (Lamp), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 12:41 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

truth bomb over here

― some dude, Tuesday, November 16, 2010 12:47 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

if i cared about 'brand positioning' i wouldnt be wasting my time in idiotic arguments like this one -- not really sure anything abt my brand is being enhanced here

i like get right by j.lo a lot more as an example of this exact song btw and it actually holds up more than 1thing but then i always feel like im never sure which stop to get off at on the contrary bandwagon

― plax (ico), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 12:52 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ha i agree w/ this

"Rehab" did, however, get to #32 on the Modern Rock chart. "1 Thing," amazingly, never got on the rock charts. (xpost)

― some dude, Monday, November 15, 2010 5:15 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

imo & based purely on anecdotal evidence, this has more to do w/ conservative radio programming & the issue of r@c3 as it relates to billboard position than anything related to popularity w/ an audience. i mean its not like R&B fans werent welcoming saadiq's similar record when he dropped it after hers.

further im not even sure i buy the 'fuxx' argument on amy w. bcuz she became a mainstream countercultural icon! trendy, non 'indie fuxx' people were fucking w/ her. maybe it was partly bcuz she had this external drama going on, but ppl wouldnt have cared if she didnt have successful songs too.

and obv this is even more true on ilx

― whats goin on witchu iron mane (deej), Monday, November 15, 2010 7:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

isn't this the opposite of what you were saying a few months ago when you insisted that Back To Black is "underrated" and I snorted with derision?

ur entire 'argument' (i guess) seems completely relational - its okay to really love a song but its boring/corny/incorrect to love a song lots of other ppl like, or the wrong ppl like, or to love it for the 'wrong reasons' - and amorphous bcuz none of the terms u use have much 'meaning'. also i just thought it was lol that you keep stunting for critical deconstruction of received wisdom when so many of your posts seem to rely on a bunch of 'lazy assumptions' about who likes what and why they like it

not going to caveat shit like w/e ur just u

but ite need to just 'space out' on this shit... music is more than context... peaced out

who cares

― .gif of the magi (Lamp), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 12:14 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

for the love of god dude its not about what u love & no one is questioning ppl's very real & authentic & true relationships to the songs they love. no one was being attacked personally here. we just said the results were boring! yr the one going into labrynthin levels of overanalysis. al: "i didnt want everyone to go for an obvious #1 so i excluded x, y." me: "you should have excluded z, in that case" results: "Z wins" me: "predictable"

so wait why is it wrong to point this out?

isn't this the opposite of what you were saying a few months ago when you insisted that Back To Black is "underrated" and I snorted with derision?

― some dude, Tuesday, November 16, 2010 12:57 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

its exactly the same as what i was saying! its totally underrated around here

her being a 'countercultural icon' is an argument that shes more influential than critics were giving her credit for

how are you able to parse these kinds of things when yr on the other side of the argument but not now?

i think he means "mainstrm counter culture" which is like lady gaga or w/e

"also i just thought it was lol that you keep stunting for critical deconstruction of received wisdom when so many of your posts seem to rely on a bunch of 'lazy assumptions' about who likes what and why they like it"

when do i say anything about why people like '1 thing' in this thread? never is when.

its exactly the same as what i was saying! its totally underrated around here

― whats goin on witchu iron mane (deej), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 2:00 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

uh no -- you called it "critically underrated" and cited Pitchfork's SCATHING 6.4 when everyone pointed out its status on p&j, metacritic etc. read the thread again: ILM Top 100 2005-2009: TRACKS

yes, i still think it is critically underrated. It was popular w/ mainstream mags & press & big newspaper critics but not w/ 'elite' indie press, or the kinds of ppl who say read ilx

i remember the discussion, al. and nothing about it contradicts what im saying here! 'back in black' is ... underrated. and you confirm it by excluding 'rehab'

1 thing is, at least on ilx, way more the 'corny fuxx' choice

like were u worried that jann wenner was gonna come thru & vote for 'rehab' on your poll?

btw in that poll ILM voted "Rehab" the 13th best R&B song of the past 5 years and Back To Black the 7th best R&B album. SO UNDERRATED GUYS.

and where was '1 thing'?

i dont even get why you're bringing up this tangential b.s. in this thread, unless youre just looking to make this argument more clusterfukky.

us ivory tower elitists only have so much time to get down in the dirt with the little people and enjoy the raw gritty production of Mark Ronson, when we've got a daily tea time with Amerie

i'm bringing it up because you have a very vague and conveniently amorphous idea of what is rated highly or underrated among ILXors or among critics or just among Pitchfork critics or among your young credible IRL friends

I consider "Rehab" comparable with "Crazy" (or "F*** You") in that regard: these tunes divide fuxx down the middle because some of them can actually see the nostalgia button being pushed in a way that is much less obvious/straightforward (and so easier to self-justify) in a tune like "1 Thing".

― Tim F, Monday, November 15, 2010 6:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you have a way of trying to make a very specific, very precise point by stating it indefensibly broad terms and then letting us get confused and slowly help you hack it down to what you expected us to infer all along (xpost)

your young credible IRL friends

― some dude, Tuesday, November 16, 2010 1:17 PM (39 seconds ago) Bookmark

can u stop being a whiney-style dick for, like, 2 minutes? ive never claimed my irl friends are 'credible' and have only brought them up as an example of ppl living outside the ilx / media world bubble. ive never made any claims abt their 'authenticity' or 'cred' or race or gender or whatever other b.s. you and whiney have been projecting on them

haha i had a much snarkier way of phrasing that that i deleted and rephrased!

you have a way of trying to make a very specific, very precise point by stating it indefensibly broad terms and then letting us get confused and slowly help you hack it down to what you expected us to infer all along (xpost)

― some dude, Tuesday, November 16, 2010 1:18 PM (23 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i get a lot of paranoid reading into my shit that simply isnt there. like u guys thinking im bringing up my friends for 'cred,' or lamp assuming that im dissing ppl for liking amerie or that ive been accusing ppl of liking her for the 'wrong reasons'(!!!?)

i actually hate mark ronson so much but he is totally functionally viable on the singles from that album. i only have so much time in my life so i have not listened to the whole thing i think. i remember the first time i saw her when she was singing something off her first album on jools holland and she seemed way cooler and uh better than she turned out to be. I dont really feel like their is some winehouse/amerie dichotomy of contradicting notions of authenticity w/n rnb and this virgin/whore bait n switch line of argument ur both tryna pull on each other seems totally formed w/n the context of an endless hall of mirrors

fwiw i never got around to really talking about this much in the o.g. blog post, but i kind of somewhat purposefully somewhat unwittingly designed the top 3 here to ride a whole modernist/retro divide -- to me "1 Thing" marries old sounds to contemporary production in a very smart and subtle way just like "Step In The Name Of Love" is a 2003 R. Kelly version of classic soul and "Promise" has a whole '80s Prince via '90s Aaliyah thing going on that somehow also felt very of its moment. I think the last 10 years of radio R&B have grappled with tradition and futurism and old-fashioned sensibilities and trend-chasing in a lot of very nuanced and ambiguous ways, and tbh most of this convo has put all that interesting subtext into some very dull and reductive black and white.

yah i like the paul morley line where he says that missy elliott is like picasso bc she realised that the whole history of recorded music is a library of ideas that you can just steal from but i also realise that he obviously has never heard any missy elliott or seen any picasso paintings as well

haha i had a much snarkier way of phrasing that that i deleted and rephrased!

this is glacial right here

deej i guess mb its worth thinking about why its so impt/valuable that poll results on ilx not be 'predictable' or w/e word ur using now

kinda want to repost the manifesto that starts off 'just fine' now but lol

i just want to chime in to say that j-lo song is terrible fuck that noise

ha, I'm listening to it again because of this thread and it hasn't aged well at all

like, I was about to post "I can see that" re: the "this is better than '1 Thing'" rhetoric upthread until I actually listened to it and ot came across as strangely joyless, forced and desperate

bomb video tho

kinda feel like the reverse is true, 1 thing is always paler and more polite than i remembered. theres something a little more full bodied abt the sound of get right, and i like how her voice bounces off the staccato horns better and lol that is basically the whole point of both songs

like it feels starker and also less stark if that makes sense

i really like "get right" but it seemed odd to be such a big hit, the beat basically sounds like a looped car alarm. the j-lo/rich harrison collab i favour is "whatever you wanna do"

"such a big hit"

it basically ended her career as a musician

her gigli of song, if you will

"1 Thing" doesn't have any horns in it, which is probably why J. Lo bounces off of them better in her song

Basically this is how I break it down to an extent:

- Amerie is a more confident singer, and the song arrangement allows her space to come through, whereas J. Lo is drowned out by a neverending horn loop.
- The syncopation in "1 Thing" is better paced than in "Get Right", plus the unsyncopated sections of the latter kill its momentum and makes it feel like a slower, more plodding song when they are actually both the same tempo.

deej i guess mb its worth thinking about why its so impt/valuable that poll results on ilx not be 'predictable' or w/e word ur using now

― .gif of the magi (Lamp), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 1:34 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

i feel like this is an endless loop of us saying we're not the ones who are so stressed abt this

me: 'i just said results were predictable whyd yall get defensive'
you: 'why u so defensive about predictable results'

apparently it went #1 in UK? o_O

"get right", i mean

amerie is unquestionably a better singer, and no doubt '1 thing' is a 'more significant' moment musically, or it just feels more major. i still prefer the songwriting on 'get right,' it does this really effective emotional contrast btween this kinda fantasy urban carhorn abrasiveness & the lush overwhelming emotionalism of the bridge (which iirc is super-affecting when yr drunk)

i basically always play this when i throw a party btw

also lol, i totally remembered the guitar stabs as horn stabs, still *staccatto* and *retro* is pretty much the whole import i was tryna bring w/ that

me: 'i just said results were predictable whyd yall get defensive'
you: 'why u so defensive about predictable results'

― whats goin on witchu iron mane (deej), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 1:58 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

er i didnt quite word this right but i think u get what im saying

then again, i think THE amerie/rich harrison moment is "love's off the chain" (or maybe the "why don't we fall in love" remix), so.

xps yeah "get right" was pretty big over here

Ha yet again "big in the commonwealth" = career killer

"such a big hit"

― dark side of the goon (The Reverend), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 1:56 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it basically ended her career as a musician

― dark side of the goon (The Reverend), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 1:57 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

what

i kno, poor j lo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Lopez_discography#Singles

it's an accurate statement for her US success

because it was her last top 20 hit doesn't mean it "killed" her career as a musician, in fact i would argue that it's pretty impossible for a hit of that size to do that

i mean i heard that song all the time & saw the video on mtv a bunch -- just seems like an absurd statement

it's more accurate to note that not releasing anything of consequence AFTER "get right" is what killed j-lo's music career

give or take a medium-sized, medium-quality "do it well"

i mean i heard that song all the time & saw the video on mtv a bunch -- just seems like an absurd statement

I loved the video which I'm not sure is terribly defensible. I find J Lo a rather likeable media presence really.

yeah lex otm, she hasn't released anything nearly as great since "get right"

though I did like this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmc8kjkwG4A

dope Tavares sample

I find J Lo a rather likeable media presence really.

yeah ditto. i mean, for a spell in the early to mid 00s she was coming out with a stream of pretty amazing pop songs too, and it's nothing to be ashamed of that that appears to have come to an end. have you read the go fug yourself girls "doing" her voice? recommended.

dope Tavares sample

― The Brainwasher² = (The Brainwasher) X (The Brainwasher), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 3:41 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

kinda carries the song ... idk the original is too ingrained in my brain to dig that

don't think i've heard anything by her since "get right"!

and she was not a good media presence or personality at all

yeah but i think logic holds that not hearing anything since "get right" says more about the material after "get right" than it does "get right" itself

i mean by the same logic you could say that "1 thing" killed amerie's career seeing as it's her last song to chart on billboard hot 100

yeah she was about famous as you can be without having any discernable personality whatsoever (xpost)

that's how i feel about rihanna

when she actually started giving interviews after the chris brown thing she came off pretty normal and likeable. j.lo has logged hundreds of hours of speaking (not singing) onscreen and is still a blank.

amerie was never a 'legacy artist'

regardless of how you slice it it's a nonsensical opinion

like, explain how the listening public, upon hearing "get right", was all "well this is not what i want from j. lo!" and that led to the end of her music career... despite it being a top 15 hit

it was definitely kind of the beginning of the end -- i mean j.lo was so desperate for a hit that she tried to take "1 thing" and when amerie's version leaked and took off, "get right" was her consolation prize. i don't think it inspired feelings of revulsion in the world at large but it was kind of a "yeah, that's enough from you" junction for her.

remix w/ Fab is better btw

yeah ships otm. it reached that position pretty much bc j lo couldn't have released a lead single at that point without it being at least a medium-size hit unless she went completely off the deep end. amerie's never had that luxury.

'went off the deep end'?? you dudes are talking crazy

it was a hit, because it was good, her later songs werent, because they werent, end of story

exactly, jeez

i think jlo's persona is pretty obvi -- shes kind of an airhead w/ high self-regard?

who rlly wants to make sure u know shes down

im sort of joking

I like imagining J Lo's fans hearing "Get Right" and thinking "hey Jenny, I could accept your boilerplate Darkchild, your boilerplate gay diva house and your boilerplate murder inc, but this? It sounds vaguely like '1 Thing'. Bridge too far, J!"

lol

the Fat Joe duet right after "Get Right" is a more plausible career killer

i didn't say she went off the deep end. you are totally misreading me. my point was her kinda lame, not-off-the-deep-end song was a medium-sized hit, as any not-off-the-deep-end j lo lead single at that point would have at least been. i was just adding that caveat so no one would go "oh, but what if she pulled a lauryn hill!" or something like that.

just in case anyone is wondering, i'm on sorta vacation right now but will be home tomorrow & will poll the new list and start making up the zips

also wanted to say that i got a good lol out of the m@tt quoting

haha

yeah i mean no rush -- should be a fun thread whenever you get to it!

this is it if anyone wants to look at it now: http://narrowcast.blogspot.com/2010/11/singles-of-00s-part-5-non-southern-rap.html

one thing i love for whatever reason about "laundromat" is how the spoken bits aren't really any diegetically different from the sung parts - the arbitrariness of that makes it seem like an operetta or something lol

def my second favorite song on this awesome list, with "charlene" (a new find!) third

i played the whole 50-song CD through on my way home for thanksgiving a couple weeks ago, props to al & jordan

honestly might pick "charlene" at this point

yeah man that was my favorite new discovery from this list too

belatedly thanking you ship for showing me the sunshine, i'd totally missed her first time around; 94.5 in boston too busy flogging "i'm real" to play her I guess

"charlene" was a radio staple for like 5 years but i feel like i never hear it anymore, bums me out

I've never heard it in the radio. :(

yeah anthony h kinda blipped off the radar there, except maybe on the grown folks soul stations, which is a shame because the follow up was really good, too. (though nowhere near as good as the first one.)(never heard the third one.)

didn't get to vote in this but it would be pretty hard if not impossible to choose between these for me

3. Amerie - "1 Thing" (2005) 11
2. R. Kelly - “Step In The Name of Love (Remix)" (2003) 4
4. D'Angelo - "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" (2000) 3
10. Anthony Hamilton - "Charlene" (2004) 2

It might have gotten played on the smooth jazz station here, but that's the only station in Seattle that would have played him in a million years. :/

anthony hamilton's third album was really good, def at least on a par with the first

you should probably use titles when you're talking about Anthony Hamilton's albums, since he had one in the '90s noone heard and two compilations of early material released after he became successful

btw wow that first Hamilton LP has some of the worst cover art of all time:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/09/AHamiltonXTC.jpg/220px-AHamiltonXTC.jpg

those three giant fingers on each hand are going to give me nightmares!!

these are the 'outtakes' from the list as they appeared in my all-genre decade list later:

http://narrowcast.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-top-522-singles-of-2000-2009.html

324. The-Dream - "Rockin' That Shit"
327. Amy Winehouse - "Rehab"
332. N Sync - "Girlfriend"
338. Kelly Rowland - "Can't Nobody"
347. Beyonce - "Sweet Dreams"
349. R. Kelly - “Ignition”
350. R. Kelly - "Ignition (Remix)"
356. Jennifer Hudson - "Spotlight"
358. Ryan Leslie - "Diamond Girl"
359. Jordin Sparks f/ Chris Brown - "No Air"
360. Jazmine Sullivan f/ Missy Elliott - "I Need U Bad"
361. Cassie - "Me & U"
363. Omarion - "Entourage"
367. Jeremih - "Imma Star (Everywhere We Are)"
371. Macy Gray - “I Try”
380. Brandy - "What About Us"
384. Mario - "Let Me Love You"
385. Ashanti - "Only You"
393. Maxwell - "Lifetime"
395. Usher f/ Alicia Keys - "My Boo"
396. Prince - "Black Sweat"
401. The-Dream - "Shawty Is Da Shit"
408. Jagged Edge - "Walked Outta Heaven"
409. Slim - "So Fly"
410. 112 - "Dance With Me"
416. Trey Songz - "Wonder Woman"
450. Jesse McCartney - "Leavin'"
451. Jagged Edge - "What It's Like"
459. Beyonce - "Naughty Girl"
460. Justin Timberlake - “I’m Lovin’ It”
461. Pink - ‘There U Go”
470. Destiny's Child - "Jumpin' Jumpin'"
475. Lucy Pearl - "Dance Tonight"
494. Alicia Keys - "Karma"
495. Ne-Yo - "Miss Independent"
502. R. Kelly - "I Wish"
503. Janet Jackson - "Someone To Call My Lover"
506. Justin Timberlake - "Until The End of Time"
513. Mario - "C'Mon"
514. Rihanna - "If It's Lovin' That You Want"
516. Aaliyah – “I Care 4 U"
517. Destiny's Child - "Say My Name"
520. John Legend - "Heaven"
521. Alicia Keys - "How Come You Don't Call Me"

you don't have an ask thread, so i'm posting this here b/c the thread you posted it on was locked & you're likely to see it:

i don't know if anyone was really rubbing their hands together scheming to get her off ilx -- i certainly wasn't, as someone who's no particular fan of hers and joined in the clusterfuck. i've clicked the SB button or thought someone could use a break from time to time, but i'd never actively wish for someone to stop posting (except maybe markers).

― some dude, Thursday, August 25, 2011 7:27 PM

what's that about

i'm done trying to cajole you into posting like the smart, opinionated person i know you are, i know you're dedicated to stupid gifs and youtubes and "looooool" til the end of time, i guess i should just ocnsider a killfile (i usually don't like the idea of a killfile because it seems like it would make threads confusing, but since you never prompt or participate in any real discussion it probably wouldn't make a difference).

sorry you feel that way

sorry your posting persona sucks ass

congrats on being an asshole

(sometimes, at least)

fwiw i'm mainly mean to you because it's the only surefire way to get rid of the taylor swift gif zombie with the thousand yard stare for a minute and get an actual person. if i knew a way of talking to markers the real person without being a jerk to you i'd do that instead.

al is bringing the real talk, markers - didn't we do this whole thing a few months ago?

^^^

y'all can ignore my posts if you want, i'm not having this discussion

this whole discussion has played out exactly like an episode of 'intervention' where the drug addict refuses to go to treatment

i'm not having this discussion

― markers, Thursday, August 25, 2011 10:39 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

heh

we need a resolution

this whole discussion has played out exactly like an episode of 'intervention' where the drug addict refuses to go to treatment

― J0rdan S., Thursday, August 25, 2011 10:44 PM

????

al is bringing the real talk, markers - didn't we do this whole thing a few months ago?

― frogsb (k3vin k.), Thursday, August 25, 2011 8:41 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^

― The Reverend, Thursday, August 25, 2011 8:49 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

y'all can ignore my posts if you want, i'm not having this discussion

― markers, Thursday, August 25, 2011 10:39 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark

http://www.addictionsearch.com/_media/addictionsearch/stock/430_238/twelve_step_meth_hiv.jpg

i'm done trying to cajole you into posting like the smart, opinionated person i know you are

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/08/30/Stressed-teacher-460x276.jpg

i promise i will never expect better of you, lamp

theres a bart simpson tshirt thats applicable here but ill let markers post the .jpg

yo honestly i feel like markers is a bro but the dude just needs to open up a little! getting called out on shit makes an ilxor imo! be u!

his nu-metal confessionals have been a step in the right direction, i will say

did j sarge ever put up a poll of your top 100 albums blogpost???

yo honestly i feel like markers is a bro but the dude just needs to open up a little! getting called out on shit makes an ilxor imo! be u!

― frogsb (k3vin k.), Thursday, August 25, 2011 11:44 PM

thanks 4 this, k3v

there was no albums poll nah

that enon album is so good tho

id totally forgotten about it

yo honestly i feel like markers is a bro but the dude just needs to open up a little! getting called out on shit makes an ilxor imo! be u!

― frogsb (k3vin k.), Thursday, August 25, 2011 11:44 PM

thanks 4 this, k3v

― markers, Thursday, August 25, 2011 11:51 PM (3 minutes ago)

man you got it - honestly as someone who was nearly clowned off the site as a newbie i feel u! i feel like you're scared to open up tho, like you're scared the main ilx demo will not like u or something...dude everyone likes you! i pal around with sarge and deej or underrated aero (who i've met irl) and whoever but am not afraid to disagree with them or call them out - ppl will respect you for having opinions, fuckin go all out dude

totally. and also, and i really don't intend this in a dickish way, but it's ok to not post if you don't have anything to say too. it's really the posting the exact same thing into several different threads (not just the Blink vid but lots of stuff) that makes me really irritable.

but yes that Enon album is the shit

yeah and as someone who thinks some dude is the shit as a poster/writer and a similar-gen ilxor pay attn!

hey some dude do you really not rate ryan leslie's 'addiction' remix?

i dont respect people for having opinions fwiw

unless their my opinions

fuckin go all out dude

just know that we'll also clown you into submission if you go too far in the opposite direction

i definitely do -- it was #22 here: al ship's top 50 rap/r&b crossover singles of the 00s -- which is your favorite?

(assuming we're talking about the remix w/ Fabolous that was a hit and not the later remix w/ Rick Ross and Keri Hilson and Trey Songz that i remember nothing about)

thanks for that post too, k3v. i'm honestly not sure how accurate the "scared to open up" charge is. i generally keep irl shit off the boards, but i feel like i've probably answered almost every question someone's asked me on my ask thread, and i don't really see where i'm holding back where i shouldn't be right now, although i could be missing something

when it comes to music i basically got nothing right now, so maybe i should just take al's advice and "not post if you don't have anything to say," which would mean not saying much on ilm right now. probably a good idea

son tho!!!!

i'm just saying...as a dude who considers himself relatively smart i'm saying that it's ok to call out the main dudea who be callin u out & such

Damn, can't believe I've never heard Believo. It's better than High Society? I had that album in regular rotation for years.

dude tho....as someone who has kept off-board/relationship shit separate from normal shit...i feel u as far as far as privacy goes....

i agree that irl shit is best kept on lock, so i agree with markers there. i still post my sad share of whiny emo bullshit but i do try to keep the specifics as vague as possible. controlling the whiny emo bullshit quotient is everyone's personal job.

but i don't really think that's what al was talking about.

i'm not even nuts about keeping the board & irl separate. i talk to ppl off board, am g+/fb friends w/ ilxors, i've met a handful of ilxors irl

i just think there are some things that shouldn't be posted abt, and i've been p good at not posting about those things

no it's not the exactly what al's talking about, but i was just addressing the "scared to open up" thing by pointing out that i've opened up a bunch and almost always answer stuff ppl ask me about on the ask markers through

yeah i mean before i had a kid and there was no way to not share that w/ the board i had like zero biographical info on ilx. i don't necessarily mean share dirt, or even necessarily be more opinionated. i just mean if a large percentage of your posts involve cutting and pasting or less than a sentence's worth of typing, people aren't getting much of "you" in any felt sense.

Believo is def better than High Society! HS def has some of their best songs though

i generally keep irl shit off the board

i think the ship meant more that you keep yr actual opinions/insights abt shit p close to the vest and instead post low content shit all the time

i think markers has more or less found his niche, but i dig what ship is saying about being the real you and not the carles you -- which doesn't mean posting earnestly about your irl either

high society has enon's best song but believo! is just so fukken tight

haha low content

do you think there are enough people who have high society to justify a poll thread? cause now i wanna talk about what th ebest song is

me, you, and lamp will vote.

and of course the usual 10 or 12 lurkers who vote but never comment on the threads in question.

i don't really have anything insightful to say about music. i'm not a critic, and i don't really think about music critically, so the extent of the contribution i can give to most music threads is "i like this" or "i don't like this." i don't really read much criticism anymore unless it's by an ilxor, and i don't follow any genres close enough to have something out of the ordinary to say. the main thing i follow is tech stuff, and i don't post about that much here. but, i mean, i have been a little over the past two days and i'd assume a lot of ppl missed it b/c they don't read the ilx apple threads, which are pretty niche compared to, say, the odd future thread or something

the 'apple is more niche than odd future on ilx' thing is lol because of how true it is

the other stuff i follow is philosophy stuff and i really don't feel like posting abt that on ilx tbh

dude i am a critic and i have zero insightful to say about music. *go with your heart.*

yeah like 90% of my posts are "I like this [youtube]"

ftr I have no problem with markers but I'm not that familiar w/ his posts tbh

bro i actually have a negative amount of insight when it comes to musical shit, just share your honest opinions... all killer, no filler!!!

hahaha

I'd probably engage in an Enon/High Society thread. I'd also love to pick people's brains for more recommendations for other albums along the same lines. I used to be a fiend for music like that, but it's been ages since I've discovered anything exciting/lasting from that pocket of indie-rock.

Enon High Society Poll

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uENOY2cSRcA

^^^more niche than odd future, it's true.

ok brotown, so forgive me for getting insufferable speech givey on you especially in a context where you've already begun to come out the shell, but the shit weighs on my damn mind.

for real, dude--i know you f/w ideas. you and i read a lot of the same shit and the same people, it seems like, and i can't really talk with a lot of people about shit like craig mod or whatever. clowned as kshighway was for being corny, markers as a parody of the result of zing culture is nowhere near as interesting a dude as i know mister nanunanulopoplpolous.

i'm speaking here, remember, as a guy who was and is clowned for too often otming/RTing other people (i sort of assume a lot of people bail on me on twitter cause i half treat RTs like a job). i know often someone else has already said it better and you feel you have nothing to add but still want to bolster prominence by highlighting it--that's a impulse i absolutely get. and along those lines, i also totally get that it's a risk to form a tentative opinion about something nebulous and put it out there without being afraid it'll be shot down, or worse, completely ignored.

but fuck it. it's the internet. i've gotten a lot more comfortable articulating my views on a lot of different things both online and in life by putting up and defending trial balloons on ilx. it's almost easier and safer to say shit here than it is anywhere else.

so i'm sayin. u know.

as a parody of the result of zing culture

and btw yall, you reap what you fucking sow

for real, dude--i know you f/w ideas.

loving this

but really, glad HOOS spoke up because i was actually thinking about him after posting on this thread as the perfect example of somebody who took his lumps for being himself early on and just kept being himself in the most unapologetic and self-assured way until people pretty quickly came to respect and appreciate him almost across the board.

hey thanks for that post, hoos. i appreciate it!

i'll work on (1) shedding "the persona" and (2) posting better in general

cool dude

btw markers did you vote itt and/or do you have a fav tune

it appears as if this revive doesn't involve anyone pointing out again how retarded it is that rihanna finished third in this poll

the 'international' choice i guess

i'm gonna re-do my list

1 we belong together
2 charlene
3 promise
4 untitled
5 so sick
6 blame it
7 if i ain't got you
8 step in the name of love (remix)
9 gone
10 yo (excuse me miss)
11 u got it bad
12 when i see u
13 more than a woman
14 peaches & cream
15 maybe i deserve
16 confessions pt 2
17 doesn't really matter
18 pretty wings
19 thong song
20 closer