And His Favorite Singer is...WHO?!

Mystery Bonus points to anyone who can give me examples of Ice T (or ANY rapper) using Phil Collins samples in their act.

I assume you're ignoring the recent 'from da streets' Phil Collins tribute album, then? Ol' Dirty Bastard covering Sussudio, anyone?

Good Grief. Maybe there's something in there like Ice being the Phil Collins o' Rap or something.

Are musicians' tastes supposed to be just like their music sounds, or something? Why should they be any different from listeners in that regard?

You know the song by Phil Collins, "In the Air of the Night" about that guy who coulda saved that other guy from drowning but didn't, then Phil saw it all, then at a a show he found him?

Heh, you think that's sick? Try this: Kathleen Hanna says she's a big fan of Whitney Houston.

Er, that tracklist in full:

1. Ray J Prelude - Ray J
2. Another Day In Paradise (R And B Version) - Brandy And Ray J
3. Sussudio - Ol Dirty Bastard
4. Something Happened On The Way To Heaven - Deborah Cox
5. This Must Be Love - Dane Bowers Feat Kelis
6. In The Air Tonite - Lil Kim Feat Phil Collins
7. Gotta Hold Over Me (Easy Lover) -Coko
8. I Dont Care Anymore - Kelis
9. Cant Turn Back The Years - Joe
10. Do You Remember - Debelah Morgan
11. Against All Odds - Montell Jordan
12. One More Night - Changing Faces
13. All Of My Life - TQ
14. I Wish It Would Rain Down - Brian Mcknight
15. Take Me Home - Malik Pendleton

Can anyone tell me what the hell brought this on???
Has Phil always been able to command this kind of respect??
Is he really the king of the 'Quiet Storm', not Jeffery Osborne??

Answers please...

and on the same tack from the day today's rok tv -

fur q with "uzi lover" - "i did that bitch in/ while she lay twitchin'" if i remember correctly...

"Uzi like a metal dick in my hand, magazine like a big testacle gland,

bitch wanna try it, i said keep her quiet,

shove it up her motherfukkin ass and fry it"

another line from FurQ's Easy Lover

and this is why influence doesn't exist, foax

the most recent phil collins mad propz episode: Nas in Gear Magazine (my office has a subscription s'not my fault!) on how he doesn't think hip hop artists can measure up to the brilliance of "real" musicians like stevie wonder and phil collins

Phil Collins has appealed to many r&b lovers for a long time, presumably since around the time he started putting out solo records ("Sussudio" is a pretty great Prince rip anyway, and yes, some of his ballads fall under the "quiet storm" banner). I'll (perhaps ignorantly) suggest that a lot of "rock" fans (probably most rock critics) see him as "that dork who used to be in Genesis," but I'm pretty certain some of his stuff got played on urban stations in the early '80s, and that audience didn't give a damn about his supposedly specious prog background. Not my favourite, necessarily, but he has a handful of decent-to-very good singles, and he's better than that other dork who used to be in Genesis.

Tony Banks, I mean.

Teddy Riley's another Phil Collins fan & let's not forget all those Sting fans either... (bet Bono's got a few, too)

Seems to me this thread could tie in with the 'music and race' one if we wanted...perhaps?

"and this is why influence doesn't exist, foax "

You're Adorno's groupie, Mark, give it up. ;-)

Ice T's OG was one of the first hip Hop records I bought.

Oh Lord. So it's Collins' past as a drummer in a prog band that has damaged his otherwise blameless reputation with rock fans? Is this what you're saying?

Or maybe you were being ironic. I'm not sure.

The Neptunes namedrop America. (they think it's cool)

Sundar, I was actually trying to defend the guy (incl. his "supposedly specious" prog past), but upon consideration, the comment doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense anyway. I was trying to press that urban radio listeners came upon his music with less baggage about who Phil Collins was (ex-prog rocker) than, say, rock fans or critics, but I doubt this had any bearing at all (it certainly didn't on his sales). In fact, it was probably his popness as a solo artist that lead to so much (undeserved, in my view) Phil- hating...hence, 90% of the Phil comments on this thread (I tried to provide a counter-argument, but fired badly in the wrong direction).

Everyone's forgetting the Phillip Bailey connection.

Phil collins could coax AMAZING sounds out of synths. Me and JM in a smoothie shop sometime back -- me "what's this? this is good?"

JM: Phill Collins. "in the air". I hope you were kidding.

Me: uh yeah. (reflex action deflected by brain kicking in) no, i mean, it is pretty good.

"rappers like phil collins wtf!" = present-day day equiv of "they have natural rhythm you know"

in w.friedwald's book on jazz singers [fergit title], he talks abt eddie cantor, a white vaudeville singer who sang in blackface in the 20s: talking to a (black) jazzer, WF expresses astonishment that this jazzer might appreciate cantor's singing. Jazzer (quote v.v.v.approximate, but here's the gist): "Yeah, he's in blackface, so what? Cantor was a genius: black folks can use their ears and brains as well as their eyes, you know."

I'm amazed when anyone likes Phil Collins, never mind the endless stream of rap and R&B stars who seem to think Phil Collins is fantastic. What the hell? I imagine them sitting about talking like that scene in American Psycho about Phil Collins's career, that would be so fantastic.

Bret Ellis to thread!

I was thinking about this last night, looking at the music posters on my wall -- a huge black and white version of the Trust poster discussed in Less Than Zero (orig. for the London Underground, I think), the famous Who pop-art pose sitting in front of the union jack and a Velvets one -- they all seemed so.. blank and affectless which is I think why I like them but they're also very affected poses.

Phil Collins came by his blankness naturally. Which makes it better?

John Lydon says he's a big fan of the Bee-Gees. Nothing wrong with that at all, but a lot of people would probably find this counterintuitive.

we should add George Michael into the mix too as someone adored by many R&B artists

and, to counterbalance the hater-perception on this thread, I actually like some music by: Phil Collins, Sting, Bono, George Michael, etc (*shudder* - bit like the gross-eating part of Fear Factor) though I can understand some people's reaction to them. their stuff's probably no worse at times than -oh, say- Peter Gabriel, Robert Fripp, etc (whose fans would/will cringe at this).

Michael McDonald ("What A Fool Believes", "Sweet Freedom") & George Michael ("Club Tropicana", "Careless Whispers"), for examples, have been involved in some pop that outshines much of the music worshipped by people who would diss 'em. But if you'd told me that when I was 18 or 19, I'd have had yer guts fer garters!

do I really like music by Bono? oh yeah, "Two Hearts Beat As One" weren't bad. Virgin Prunes, that's more my style...

here's one for the chicken & the egg:
...Bee-Gees begat Al Green begat Bee-Gees...
(extend family tree in infinite directions)

John Lydon says he's a big fan of the Bee-Gees. Nothing wrong with that at all, but a lot of people would probably find this counterintuitive.
I suspect Lydon was being sarcastic. As in "I dig the Bee-Gees...NOT!"; Imagine what Saturday Night Fever would've been like if it had been set in Manchester and Lydon playing Travolta's part in the movie.
I frankly think Johnny Rotten would do a kickass version of "Stayin' Alive."

I'm pretty sure he wasn't being sarcastic. It was a radio interview about the new dance remix of GSTQ, and he was saying how he'd always listened to a lot of dance music - not just dub, but a fair bit of disco - and how punks who listened exclusively to 'punk' music had completely missed the point of punk in the first place.

Be that as it may, I still think Johnny Rotten's rendition of "Stayin' Alive" would rule soundly.

"saturday night fever set in manchester" = not saturday night fever

you can't improve on perfection

I don't for a moment doubt Mr.Lydon's sincerity. Remember, he's also big into ABBA.

As for Phil Collins- you'll notice that, with the exception of KELIS and ODB, all these artists represent the sappier, muzak-ish side of R&B (the children of Lionel Ritchie, if you will) and Hip-Hop. And the wretchedness of elevator music crosses all boundaries of race and genre (like Peter Doggertt once said- there's virtually no difference between "country" artists like Shania Twain, "Pop" artists like Celine Dion and "R&B" artists like Mariah Carey).

So when will Dave Mustaigne come out and admit he's into Lionel Ritchie?

dave mustardstaign is more into kenny loggins

Twain, Dion, and Carey have incredibly different styles. Incredibly. Faith Hill and Dion maybe less so.

Also custos' point about saturday night fever set in manchester proves why influence does not exist!

Um...you lost me. Explain.

it's a "rebuttal", he doesn't need to explain

I remember another thread somewhere where someone cited the EXACT SAME THREE artists as all sounding the same and that time I bothered to explain why they weren't. Is there some secret rockist cabal which meets to discuss exactly how to parse the pop world into silly categories?

yes it's called "the media"

Oh.

Is there some secret rockist cabal which meets to discuss exactly how to parse the pop world into silly categories?
Yes. They meet in the boiler room underneath the offices of Rolling Stone. Or at least thats what the Cancer Man implied.

Acutally, when I was asking for descriptive amplification, I was confused about the second line:
Also custos' point about saturday night fever set in manchester proves why influence does not exist!

"Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)" is as good as AOR gets.

"Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)" is as good as AOR gets.
Yeah boyyeeee...but howzit rate as phat freestyle gangsta jam? Is MC Phil keepin' it real?

Sterling: Please. I prefer "Poptastically challenged".

Seriously, though, kindly explain the differences again. One could argue that Mariah does on occasion get a bit dancier (as in music for dancing, not "Dance" the genre) and Shania does throw in a steel guitar to keep up appearences, but apart from that?

I'm not Sterling, but...for starters, Celine's, Shania's, and Mariah's voices are all vastly different. Just in the singing range they're most comfortable in (they all go in a multitude of directions, obviously): Celine's voice is deep, lower-end, almost operatic ("throaty"), Shania's more mid-range with a hint of twang (more relaxed, comparatively speaking), Mariah's a high-pitched glass- shatterer (you'll have to excuse my overly technical musical jargon here). And that barely gets at it. You can i.d. each of their voices within seconds.

Ehm, well, yeah...but with "same kind of music", I meant that their music is basically in the same genre (which is Elevator Muzak- I find calling it "pop" an act of uttermost disrespect towards performers like Shakira and The Sugarbabes), since their arrangements, song lyrics and structure seem pretty damn similiar to me. It's easy to tell Dexter Holland from That Guy From Green Day, or Ja Rule from Ludacris; but their music is still pretty much the same, no?

Shania does tightly arranged tunes with abrupt choruses. Celine does lengthy weepy ballads which barely have choruses (excepting "that's the way it has to be" which is is pure perfect disco-lite) and Mariah sings blues-inflected R&B ballads often with hip-hop derived beats and guest rappers. Ja Rule raps & sings over sumptious but rough gotti productions involving wind instruments. Ludacris uses Organized Noize and Shondrae with southern bounce production and dry technoid beats and timbaland and derived production modeled on dancehall. Both, however, have guested Nivea. Also Ja Rule uses duets and Luda relegates R&B guests to hooks.

Almost everyone's arrangements and structure are identical in pop music (by which I mean almost all western music that isn't classical or jazz). The recent spat of bootlegs drives this point home in a big way (songs from different genres map out perfectly with songs from other genres). Anyway, voices are music (or part of it), so what else can I try to pull apart to disprove your point? I think you're being selective with your arguments--there are plenty of teen- pop-haters out there who would lump Sugababes and Britney together 'cause their "beats are similar" or 'cause they're "barely old enough to drink in 13 states," but I assume you hear the difference there, no?

I think The Offspring's music is different from Green Day's.

S Woods: Yeah, the voices are part of the music...but you can't really *choose* them, can you? I mean, almost every singer worth his or her salt is immediatley distinguishable from everyone else...but a Country song with George Jones singing over it and a Country song with Elvis Costello singing over it stll belong to the same genre, right?

Song structure...maybe (the bootleg craze shows nothing but the fact that ppl have waaaay too much time on their hands tho), although I'm not sure Stereolab or Mogwai would agree here. Arrangements? Hardly. You'd never find those wimpy keyboards on an AC/DC track, say...

Sterling: Granted, I was probably thinking more along the lines of the ballads-ish side of Mariah....how does, say, "One Sweet Day" count as Bluesy? Hardly the stuff I'd hear Howlin' Wolf sing...

And Celine does too have choruses. At least that new song does.

"still belong to the same genre" = yes, if you assume exactly the thing yr supposed to demonstrating

yr arguing like alex in nyc, as if genre was decided by plato in seven million BC and somehow unchanging stands above and separate from stuff like WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE and THE WORDS THEY ARE SINGING and the RELATIONSHIP THEY HAVE TO THE CONVENTIONWS THEY CHOOSE TO RESPECT

with all these in mind (viz the content) gap between george jones and costello = arguably GREATER than gap between mariah and howlin wolf (actually it's not, but howlin wolf doesn't define "bluesy", he defines "electric chicago blues) => gap between mariah and bonnie raitt is much less than gap between jones/costello

Same sound, same lyrics, different traditions. I was actually speaking of a specific, existant example here- Elvis Costello has recorded "A Good Year For The Roses", so has George Jones. I don't see any big diferences between the two versions- both employ a vaguely Countrypolitan sound...definition of Countrypolitan, as seen by me: music that still clings to the roots of "white American" music (i.e. no corruption by R&B, though of course Country itself is wildly influenced by African music, its sources are all over the place), whilst adding enough schmaltz to make it seem sophisticated (strings, mainly) and hiding the hillbilie element as well as possible (no more songs about drinking and setting the woods on fire).

I guess Howlin' Wolf doesn't define "bluesy", but then bluesy is impossible to define objectively. To me, it's always meant music with a slightly melancholic edge, mostly with a very sparse backing...which isn't what Mariah is at all.

And I wouldn't have any qualms about dropping 50% of the Mariah Carey and Bonnie Rait ouevres in the same genre, Adult-Contemporary Ballads.

yeah well, like i say, you use genre as an excuse not to listen to or think about sound, content or content, in that case

1) AC/DC are a terrific disco band (ever heard "Who Made Who"?).

2) Mutt Lange married Shania Twain but only to quash rumours that he was sleeping with Angus Young.

3) Twain and AC/DC don't share "wimpy keyboards" (by which I assume you mean "keyboards that sound like Stereolab's"), but they do share MANY sonic similarities

4) To paraphrase: One could argue that Costello does on occasion get a bit punkier (as in music for pogoing, not "Punk" the genre) and George Jones does throw in a steel guitar to keep up appearences, but apart from that?

5) "No corruption by R&B." Huh?

6) "Almost every singer worth his or her salt is immediatley distinguishable from everyone else..." You said it better than I could've!

I meant bluesy to mean using a blues-inflected scale = she has more minor notes than Shania.

Sterling: Acutally, when I was asking for descriptive amplification, I was confused about the second line:
Also custos' point about saturday night fever set in manchester proves why influence does not exist!

Yes, you already said that.

Yeah, but we all got sidetracked talking about Shania/Mariah/Celine.

1) No.

2) So?

3) Stereolab's keyboards sound more perky than wimpy.

4) The differences between Elvis Costello circa "Almost Blue" and George Jones are next to non existant; I'd have no trouble whatsoever putting them in the same genre.

5) Meaning it doesn't acknowedlege the mixing of C&W and R&B (and Bel Canto and Blues and Folk and...) that resulted from Elvis Presley's and Chuck Berry's appearence.

6) But that still doesn't mean they can't share a genre.

Aha! mr rf. concedes defeat as he is no longer arguing that they are THE SAME, but simply share a genre. Now we could go on to argue over what defines genre (i.e. is it social or innate, et cet) or simply call this game, set, and match.

It is impossible for two performers to sound completley "the same"; don't be so literal minded. What I meant was that, for three performers from supposedly wildly different genres, they sound strangely similiar (i.e. similiar enough to be put into the same genre).

Can we moan about the Ludacris/Ja Rule insanity for a while

"supposedly wildly different genres" = yr projection of what we must be saying about genre, when in fact we DON'T use it the way you do, as a shortcut to AVOID listening and thinking abt the specific records being made

NONE of these genres are "wildly" different: they always overlap hugely (viz metal and disco, as swoods points out), which is why appeal to genre is completely useless as a route to cultural evaluation

Guilty as charged, actually. I'll admit I never listened to a single Ludacris take. I merely asked a friend "Ja Rule is to Green Day as ----- is to The Offspring?".

Mark S: I guess my approach is just a hell of a lot more socio-cultural than the one you guys use; Pop, R&B and Country come from diferent places, appeal to different people and affect these people in different ways. That makes them wildly different in my eyes.

Oh will you please just fucking sit down one day and fucking listen to something and let it do what it does on it's own. Maybe you'll like it maybe you won't but jesus christ you might as well never buy another cd if you're going to restrict your own taste and avoid new things like that.

B-but you've just been arguing that their products are the SAME! Oy vey, my aching head.

God it's like deciding what's good before you hear it just in case you might like something you shouldn't. Why come to a music forum? You'll never have anything worthwhile or original to say about anything because everything has to meet your predetermined criteria and there's no room for the personal except in defining those.

I am so staggered by the idea of ANYONE thinking that Ja Rule and Ludacris sounded the same that I can't contribute anything worthwhile to this thread.

no it's LESS socio-cultural, daniel, because it's so abstract: it's anti-historical at a macro AND a micro-level (macro: genres are "formed" retrospectively, to buoy up markets that seem to have gone shaky) (micro: ppl, ESPECIALLY musicians, don't listen to music in the way you say they do => they listen for distinctions not similarities)

the thread question was (to cartoon it up a bit) : ISN'T IT WEIRD THAT THESE COOL STREETWISE RAPPERS LIKE UNCOOL WHITE DAD- MUSIC!!?? But it's only "weird" if you've already decided that rappers comform to a highly parochial stereotype derived from clumsy mediation that exploits and exaggerates differences based (largely) on earlier marketing strategies. To sell a rapper to a spin reader (if you work for spin, or advertise in spin: same diff??), you need to present the rapper as someone who doesn't totally fuck with the spin reader's reasons for being a spin reader...

Almost everything that passes for rock history (and jazz and blues history before it) is prey to this distortion: we stumble among the piled tatters of a million forgotten promo campaigns.

Swept forward by the winds of history...

cold hands thrust deep into the pockets of as-yet-unformed possibility

like riders on the storm, into this world we're born.

like a dog without a phone, bagpipes without a drone, emo without a moan

filling the anosmic void with cold cream and adenoids.

.....you know what?

You guys are right.

I've been exposed to so many new thoughts since I came to this forum that at this point I'm just babbling. My sincerest apologies to everyone for wasting your time.

I'll go back to lurker mode now.

Thank you.

The Neptunes namedrop America. (they think it's cool)
Oh they are IRONIC. (yes, I am being ironic about them being ironic. or am i/are they? hmmmmm)

but ICE T and PHIL COLLINS?
Why has noone mentioned Eminem and Carey's relationship? Eminem: "She doesn't really have it all together" hahahaha

Dan: DON'T LURK! Your discussions are lively, interesting, and slightly mad.

I agree with Dan P...nothing to apologize for, Daniel Rf. I haven't partaken in a ton of discussions here (I consider myself a highly unsuccessful poster in fact), but I can imagine it might've felt like people were ganging up on you. In fact, your "babbling" had me (and apparently others) fired up enough to keep going...I mean, it was fun (sure beat work). Anyway, don't know what my point is...er, leave the full-time lurking to me, please!

Now--can some of you people start moaning about the Ludacris/Ja Rule insanity for a while and give me something entertaining to read?

What I love about Ludacris is the way he's ideally tapped into this long-running and particularly complex strain of entertaining-boasting black-culture humor that I can only really describe with the image of a bunch of guys doing something like, let's say, talking about the size of their cocks: there's patently-false self-deprecation humor ("it's like not even an inch, I swear"), realistic self-deprecation humor ("it's just this sad four and a half inches"), honesty semi- humor ("yeah, yeah, your average almost-six"), mock-bragging humor ("hahaha mine's almost eight so I guess I beat you"), actual-bragging ("I've got nine and a half inches"), humor-bragging ("oh, you all know you want my massive fourteen inches"), and then the thing Ludacris does, which would be to come out completely deadpan and be like "well my dick is 26 and a half inches long" -- it's not really a parody insofar as there's still some boast implied in going out and talking a lot of straight-up nonsense, but the appeal to authenticity completely vanishes, and all that's left is the very basic thrill of listening to someone talk loads and loads of ever-more-incredible shit without batting an eye about it. (In this sense Luda : hip- hop :: Ramosi : ILX.) (Sort of.)

Which is why it always bugs the living crap out of me when someone says Ludacris is another thug / gangsta / bling-bling guy: he is so thoroughly undercutting that, or at the very least turning it into a big entertaining and almost occasionally cute rhetorical ploy. (In fact if he even vaguely looked tough his entire schtick would fall apart.) Whereas Ja Rule is the polar opposite of constantly creating an atmosphere of authenticity around himself, constantly appealing to naturalism and realism, constantly trying to be seen as actually living up to the content and the personality of his tracks.

(NB I think interesting connections could be drawn between the Luda trope outlined above and the recent situation of Snoop, who can go on like the Tonight Show or something and say "Oh, I love Fruity Pebbles" and everyone loves it and thinks he's adorable.)

i don't know about Ludacris being the anti-tough, some of those raps on Back For The First Time (I don't have Word Of Mouf yet) are pretty much straightforward thuggery with a crazy-ass sense of humor, they're not really self-deprecating. there's a world of difference between Snoop and Luda because Snoop's whole thing is to portray himself as that dude at the party whose major crisis is whether he's going to pass out before he can have sex with the three women on the couch with him, like a more drug-addled slick rick (as is the obv comparison). Ludacris is an interesting mix of aggressive and crazy, but not in an unthreatening way. although perhaps snoop's murder trial undermines my whole argument.

Namechecking Greenbriar mall in Spin and featuring a lipsyncing chicken in your video ("Saturday" has at least 5 WTF? moments for me, 9 if you include the video) seals it for me. Best Album Cover of the past year also.; Ja Rule? - he didn't ruin "Can I Get A..." and he wears out a catchphrase quicker than Da Brat, and I like that he's J. Lo's Sonny Bono, even when he's featuring Ashanti.

Once I saw a ten-year-old boy singing "Against All Odds" on Star Search. Ice T was one of the judges and he was singing along and swaying during the entire performance. Even Ahmet Zappa was weirded out.

Steven Tyler loves Dead Can Dance.

Miles used to give props to Phil Collins AND Mr. Mister. [Shrugs]

Goldie used to prattle on about Squeeze in interviews...

Kayne West says of the Arctic Monkeys: "The guy on the drums is real tight, man. He's got that whole British vibe going on and he brings that Phil Collins, Genesis sound to the table."

I thought I heard a Genesis and Phil ref in De La Soul's "Breakadawn" but lyrics posted online read:
Believe the Genesis life fill with stills
so, not quite there.

the libertines loved chas and dave, even though the lovable cockernee duo never sold them no crack