thread abt the trend of R&B appropriation/ref.ing in current indie music.

i know someone already started a thread abt this and it was a fn disaster, i wanna change the angle tho, bc its much more interesting to me to think abt why this is happening at this partic. moment. and the fallout of mashup/fallout of blog-house/rise(?) of chillwave.

kinda feels like an inevitable thing that any new buzzband is gonna have some RnB angle now. Most obvious examples are stillness is the move, the xx (aaliyah -static major; space) but also salem's goth crunk, Discovery, How to Dress well (the-dream+black dice = ectoplasmic, scary/sexxxy chillwave)

obv. i realise that the R&B signifiers in any one of those is gonna be pretty debatable to a lot of ppl, which is part of my point - lately it seems that anything with a slightly electronic element is gonna put a little timba nod or something in their press release.

wondering what the roots of this are? Junior Boys 2-step hints on last exit seem like a large precursor to me, but they kinda dropped that pretty fast and I dont hear their name being brought up in relat. to this. Also, I feel like a lot of this relates to early 00s mashups, esp as this was the Timba heyday that is the most celebrated era for top-40 pop music. in indie circles i think. the fact that the only current guy really being cited here is the-dream, and seemingly as an interpreter of kells more than anything

Also thinking of it in relation to the 60s-pop jangle origins of indie. where the producer-auteur thing is a strong linking narrative.

anyway i think this is kinda funny overall, but i do like a lot of the bands involved.

someone might have to lock this thread

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

kinda feels like an inevitable thing that any new buzzband is gonna have some RnB angle now

not sure i agree. this summer's big indie rock releases -- new pornographers, the nat'l, broken social scene, the hold steady -- don't have an r&b influence. and the spring/summer's big breakout indie artists -- e.g., sleigh bells, fang island, others -- don't strike me as very r&b influenced. but i'd be happy to be proven wrong (b/c i like r&b, and after listening to some top 40 radio lately, i kind of think it is a golden age for r&b-type music at the moment, so it would be a welcome trend).

(what inspired my post, tbh, is your posting a video clip of jj. jj feel "so last year" to me).

1) You are repressing the existence of Muse who obv are getting a lot of mileage out of this alongside other dress-up games.

2) A lot of these alleged R&B influences are actually mainly resembling or recalling R&B as a kind of side-benefit from some other relationship-of-influence. The XX's R&B tendencies largely feel like collateral damage from their dubstep tendencies, for example (yes, they cover R&B songs, but there's a sense in which they respect black pop in the same way that a dubstep fan would). Junior Boys were big (early) dubstep fans too, not coincidentally.

In general, it's less about a specific veneration of R&B and more about the way in which certain 14 yr old sonic ideas and their offspring have slowly infiltrated and seeped into popular consciousness.

Making too much of a direct link to R&B is a bit like assuming anyone dabbling with a 4X4 beat was specifically inspired by Chicago house.

just to clarify im kindof more interest in the gen. rhetoric that is being used to connect a lot of stuff to r&b

this is from the p4k tell 'em review :"Because those claps and snaps are nothing but crunk." which is partly refers to my point abt this indie-crit-classicist approach to r&b in this context

but yeah, i am a bit out of date w/ this

Critics and artists are justifying their indie tastes/tendencies via references to more credible-seeming black music precedents since forever?

Not getting where Muse fall into this (and I like Muse sometimes). It seems like a weird tangent.

They've been doing songs with stuttery beats recently, obv a Timbaland influence however watered down.

i am going to make a mental note to try to avoid that for as long as possible. shudder.

What about the reverse? Fucking Joanna Newsom and the guy from My Morning Jacket are both featured on the new Roots album, and Ratatat and MGMT were both on Cudi's album last year, not to mention all the people Timbo works with and the crap cameos on Blueprint 3.

HODGE PODGE!

for probably 3 or 4 decades, a pretty large number of the best and most significant rock bands were heavily influenced by non-rock and in particular the dominant forms of black popular music of the time, whether it was blues or soul or funk or whatever. it probably shouldn't be considered 'novel' or 'gimmicky' for a rock band to namecheck R&B or have an audible influence, but it is at this point.

I think in a lot of ways it is more novel/gimmicky for indie specifically to have these namechecks/influences than some other strains of rock due to indie's descent from punk, which somewhat conciously rejected the blues/soul trappings of earlier rock. Of course punk would eventually reinject itself with disco and reggae, but not the lineage that would morph into college rock and eventually indie.

Not casting aspersions here, but I suspect some of the r&b appropriation in recent indie is a little bit of a wink-and-nod. Unlike a lot of posters here who could very easily go from listening to Teddy Pendergrass to Leonard Cohen to KISS in the span of 30 minutes and not even think twice about how varied that platter is, present day indie kids (including those in bands) kind of view r&b as a guilty pleasure or something kitschy with which they can experiment.

On a lot of these bands' Myspace pages, they'll classify themselves as Pop/Black Metal/Ghetto Tech or whatever because the legacy of genre means nothing. All they know is that they bought an Al B. Sure 12" at the store the other day for 99¢ and tonight they're going to have friends over for beer and marvel at its "oldness."

add gayngs to the list

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nsh1bLIp-o

he wd be the r&b artist to be takin it wayyyy back

That's damn good.

Not casting aspersions here, but I suspect some of the r&b appropriation in recent indie is a little bit of a wink-and-nod. Unlike a lot of posters here who could very easily go from listening to Teddy Pendergrass to Leonard Cohen to KISS in the span of 30 minutes and not even think twice about how varied that platter is, present day indie kids (including those in bands) kind of view r&b as a guilty pleasure or something kitschy with which they can experiment.

Okay, Discovery, I guess, but most of the bands listed itt are pretty earnest.

present day indie kids (including those in bands) kind of view r&b as a guilty pleasure or something kitschy with which they can experiment

i wonder how true of a sweeping generalization this is. it seems true, but a lot of the indie kids i know are pretty genuine in their love of rn'b. or at least, a certain song or artist. like everyone dances to "ignition (remix)" and it doesn't feel like it's some ironic moment

i read a discovery interview once, i think they're pretty earnest in their appreciation of rn'b. maybe less so in their appropriation of it

Yeah, otm.

Not getting where Muse fall into this (and I like Muse sometimes). It seems like a weird tangent.

A few weeks ago in a bar this guy who had drunk about 4 long island iced teas since I got there convinced me to listen to his iPod with him. He played a bunch of tracks by Ludacris and Roscoe Dash and then said "hold up. we're gonna do it white boy style now" and proceeded to play "Starlight" by Muse.

This has nothing to do with this thread, just thought I'd share this story with u all.

A few weeks ago in a bar this guy who had drunk about 4 long island iced teas since I got there convinced me to listen to his iPod with him

wait waht

he gave me one of the earbuds.

it could be because genre is meaningful to trainspotters but generally meaningless to most musicians including r&b musicians, who have always run the gamut of styles without much concern to what genre they fit into

just a thought

For whatever reason, this thread reminds me of when Phoenix's Alphabetical came out, and a review I read claimed it was like "Beck meets Dr. Dre." I remember being totally jazzed about that combination. At the same time, in 2004 I didn't think of Phoenix so much as an "indie band."

(Here's the quote I was thinking of:

"Everything Is Everything" can only be described as the perfect song. If you let Daft Punk produce Justin Timberlake's "Rock Your Body" with Michael Franks on vocal you'd be getting close to what it sounds like. "Run..." sounds like Beck produced by Dr Dre. Listening to 'Alphabetical' is, in many ways the ultimate "hipster-music" but - and this is important - always done with soul. - Natt & Dagg (Norway)")