Why do names of genres change?

then what?

I remember the Swing -> RnB switch too. Not sure why it happened. I still like and would defend the Urban term now as it's sufficiently ambiguous enough in terms of describing the sound to escape the usual pitfalls of genre-coining i.e. too specific, soon out-of-date.

DnB came out of what people were calling 'Intelligent' at one point, the more abstract or ambient form of the music as opposed to jungle/jump-up - irony being that drums and bass were the focal points of the latter whereas the former leaned towards melodic elements, jazz etc. Naturally there was some resentment by Jungle fans to the 'Intelligent' term as having only just banished the 'racist' connotations of the word it implied their preferred style was 'stupid'.

Nah, that'd be "nu-metal".

I never knew r&b was ever called "swing", either, though! (New Jack Swing, maybe...) (Was "swing" something British people called it?)

Also, remember when "metal" changed its name to "grunge"?

KRS-1: "RAP is something you do; HIP HOP is something you live."

no, it was what the inventors of the sound, i.e. teddy riley called it.

ILM in ignorance over black music shocker

new jack swing mutated into R&B after the late 80s/early 90s, yep...

"Four 'r&b' acts (the term is returning to favor) made the album list, expanded this year from 30 to 40 in honor of an enlarged electorate and the curly-headed kid in the third row. More black input would have meant more commanding finishes for all four--crossover queen Donna Summer, comeback prince Michael Jackson, disco pacemakers Chic, and elder statesman Stevie Wonder--as well as for Ashford & Simpson (Stay Free, 44th), probably Dionne Warwick (Dionne, 52nd), and possibly Millie Jackson (Live and Uncensored, 55th)."

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(And nope, I still have no fucking idea what he meant by "the curly-headed kid in the third row.")

xp

Pretty melodies, often verging on what used to be called powerpop (at least in Nirvana-type grunge). And oh yeah, also "intense emotion."

Peel said on at least two occasions that Jungle had originally been called 'Fast Reggae'.

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/alt/johnpeel/features/peel_tributes_sms.shtml and search within the page for 'fast reggae')

http://www.history-of-rock.com/peter_tripp.htm

Talk about the genre known as Swingbeat

Now, "swingbeat" I think I DID hear of. But wasn't that, like, Soul II Soul (and pretty much nobody else) as opposed to the New Jack Swingsters?

so they can give out two awards!

But how was SIIS any kind of anomaly, since the break of "Back to Life," was the most present break of the early '90s (it's in Kris Kross' "Jump," for Chrissakes!!!)? I mean, that shit was like the "Good Times" of its day (not that it necessarily originated with Soul II Soul -- I think it mighta been copped from Coldcut's "Paid in Full" remix).

"Swing" was what Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Squirrel Nut Zippers and Brian Setzer tried to bring into the mainstream a couple of years later.

Around 2000, *everything* got shoved under the umbrella of "IDM", in much the same way that a bunch of genres got lumped together as "ambient" in the early 90's.

>Can you tell me where all the Sabbath riffz are in emo? thx <

Can you tell me where they are in grunge??

........Right - When the music stopped rolling

chicken or the egg

I dunno, i think there's a noticeable difference between r&b and rock and roll - it's not a hard and fast dividing line or nothin, but the higher country/folk content in rock and roll is worth noting. there's stuff that's both r&b and r&r (little richard, bo diddley, fats domino) and then there's stuff that's way more r&r than it is r&b (chuck berry, johnny burnette, el vez).

and i'm not sure i'd agree that r&r became plain ol' rock when it stopped rolling so much as when the rocking gained primary emphasis. there's lots of rock bands that roll (since we're talking about them already, sabbath's a good example, and i'd say they're a rock band more than they are a r&r band).

I prefer to say I like "rap music" because it avoids all the stupid "this is/isn't hip hop" political crap debates (although I don't know if those are as prevalent as they were a few years ago).

xp

(major x-posts)

The sound of the music is never the whole story, and sometimes is barely any of the story.

For about 10 minutes in the mid '80s rock press, "rap" was the term used by the average fan of music, while "hip-hop" was the term used by "those in the know" to differentiate themselves from those not quite in the know. Then the latter got hip to the term "hip-hop," and those in the know had nowhere to run, so just had to mix with the others.

Then in the late '60s some writers in Michigan want to reclaim their immaturity, so they stick the term "rock 'n' roll" in the subhead of their magazine, and the term becomes a code word for a whole bunch of new sounds and new modes of dress (and a new respect for some not-quite-so-new sounds/dresses), which new modes eventually get called - somewhat interchangeably, for a while - glitter, glam, heavy metal, punk.

Did hippies in the '60s ever call themselve "hippies"? This probably varied from place to place, but most called themselves freaks ('cause the media called them hippies), and those who called themselve hippies stopped after 20 minutes and spent the rest of the decade enjoying the fact that the media didn't have a clue.

But I have heard the term "hip-hop" used to refer not to funk as a whole but to the funk records (by no means instrumental-only) that the original hip-hop DJs played.