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Albums Dangerous vs Rhythm Nation 1814

Re: neo-soul / go-go

DuranDuran said:
Neo-soul is like Butterflies & Heaven Can Wait
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So you mean a ballad?

DuranDuran said:
It's mostly a kinda of mid-tempo and slow jam kind of R&B
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So what's wrong with calling it R&B? Being from a particular country or state doesn't warrant the invention of a new term. It just seems like heavy-handed over-categorization.

I put some of this down to the terrible state of the American music industry. Seems everybody is obsessed with participation awards, that they keep making up new charts so that everybody can be number 1 in one of them.

Edit: I just looked up Billboard and it's worse than I thought. There are 57 different album charts. Fifty seven! And then for singles, it gets even worse. There are:

8 All-genre charts
18 R&B/Hip-Hop charts
3 Adult/Pop
4 Country
12 Rock
5 Dance/Electronic
8 Latin
13 Christian
1 Jazz
4 Holiday
3 Ringtones
3 Spotify charts.

I've lost count, but is that 82 different singles charts? Further to this they have Canadian and other international charts... it's really confusing and pathetic. In other countries people just pay attention to "the chart", ie there is one singles chart, with everything in it, and you were either the bestseller or you weren't. Maybe that's why nobody else cares about these pigeonholes.

Long rant over.

For me, a lot of the songs on Dangerous are "dance", with a couple being "rock" and "ballad". You barely need any more than that. Very few of MJ's albums stay within one genre, especially not these sub-sub-genres that seem to have become popular.
 
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R1chard;4314251 said:
So what's wrong with calling it R&B? Being from a particular country or state doesn't warrant the invention of a new term. It just seems like heavy-handed over-categorization.
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Because that doesn't really mean anything. Technically R&B is code for music by black artists, just like when it was called "race music" in the early 1900s. "Race music" doesn't mean anything other than black music, it's not a sound. That's why when white people do R&B, it's sometimes called "blue eyed soul, or "Latin soul" if by Latino artists. "Rock n Roll" was originally just R&B by white artists. The early Rolling Stones records had remakes of blues songs, but because the Stones (& Elvis Presley) are white, then it's "rock" music. The same exact music by black artists is "rhythm & blues" or "soul music". "Gospel" is usually black artists & "contemporary Christian" is generally white artists. "R&B" had to crossover to the mainstream (code for white audience) Hot 100 singles chart. Music tends to be labeled by race/ethnicity in the USA and there's always been segregated radio formats here. It's the same with entertainment in general. Like there's TV channels for Latinos such as Telemundo & Univision. There's Black Entertainment Television & Bounce for the black audience. The USA is a large place with people of different tastes & cultures.

"Rhythm & Blues" can be James Brown, Rihanna, Michael Jackson, Louis Jordan, Brook Benton, Rick James, R. Kelly, Millie Jackson, Prince, Johnnie Taylor, Four Tops, Mary J. Blige, and so on. But if I want a funk record, I'm not going to buy Brook Benton, Luther Vandross, or Rihanna. I'm going to get a 1970s James Brown, Bar-Kays, Funkadelic, or Rick James record. If someone wants music for a New Jack Swing themed party, they're not going to play Dorothy Moore, Tyrone Davis, or Denise LaSalle which is called "Southern Soul". New Jack Swing artists would be Al B. Sure!, Today, or Bobby Brown. If the party DJ just played anything labeled R&B, the audience at the party might not dig a certain style of R&B. Sam Cooke might not flow well next to Zapp and that might not go well with an artist like Buckwheat Zydeco.

It's just like "pop music" doesn't mean anything. It's short for popular music for the mainstream audience. "Pop music" in 1925 has nothing in common (as a sound) with pop in 1974 or pop in 2020. What is pop in any given year generally has little to do with each other. In the 1980s all of these acts had Hot 100 pop hits in the USA:

Falco
Christopher Cross
Howard Jones
Mötley Crüe
Billy Ocean
Depeche Mode
Run-DMC
Hall & Oates
Styx
Chicago
Debbie Gibson
Miami Sound Machine
Terence Trent D'arby
Kenny Rogers
Whitney Houston
The Police
Kenny G
Bruce Springsteen
Pat Benetar
Duran Duran
Van Halen

Even in classical music there's different categories, and a lot of that music was created long before recorded music and radio stations with different formats existed. There's artists like The Beatles who are labeled rock, but they have songs that sound like showtunes and traditional Indian music.
 
DuranDuran;4314264 said:
It's just like "pop music" doesn't mean anything. It's short for popular music for the mainstream audience. "Pop music" in 1925 has nothing in common (as a sound) with pop in 1974 or pop in 2020. What is pop in any given year generally has little to do with each other.
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Actually it means.

Although it is true that pop music started in mid-1920s as popular music, since mid/late-1950s pop music has become a separate, distinct genre with its own characteristics:

- it borrows sounds mainly from rock and roll, but also from other genres, such as disco, or dance)
- it has a simple melodic structure (verse, chorus and bridge)
- the chorus has to be a catchy one that immediately sticks to listeners’ mind
- it has a fast tempo (a high ‘beats per minute’ value)
- it has simple lyrics with themes aimed mainly at teenagers
- the pop song’s length normally does not exceed four minutes

So, pop songs that have been recorded since mid/late-1950s until these days (2020), in essence most of them share these six common characteristics.
 
I don’t personally understand the hype around Janet or her music. No disrespect to her, because she’s immensely talented, but the “Janet vs. Michael” question has always been a no brainer in my opinion.

In my opinion, Rhythm Nation isn’t half the album Dangerous is. The title track is the only song that measures up to anything from the latter album. MJ’s album has a wider range of sonics, stronger songwriting, stronger vocals, less cliché lyrics (not to say that Dangerous doesn’t have some rough lyrical spots, but far less than Rhythm Nation), and better production.
 
Billboard

As recently as the 1980s R&B was straight up called "Black Music" in Billboard magazine.
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I haven't listen to Janet music yet. i been planning to. my grandmother was a fan of Janet and Michael loved her music as well. this is not a surprise because both of them are siblings of course not to mention both of them was/is inspire by each other.

right now i pick dangerous. the Michael vs Janet is silly. they brother and sister. to me it doesn't matter they both Jacksons unless Janet didn't want to be seen as the baby anymore which is understandable.
 
the Michael vs Janet is silly. it remind of the Michael vs Prince. i believe that stuff was made by the media. all artists was talented each their own.
 
NatureCriminal7896 said:
the Michael vs Janet is silly. it remind of the Michael vs Prince. i believe that stuff was made by the media. all artists was talented each their own.
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I don't think the thread is really about that. It was the OP who wanted to know why Rhythm Nation 1814 was generally higher than Dangerous as a New Jack Swing album, not even as just an album. So the OP was comparing them.
 
This is a recent interview by NJS singer Al B. Sure! who had been in a coma for a couple of months. He mentions Mike around 1:10 - 1:34
 
Janet does amazing music and deserves her kudos. I never listen as much but I come away more and more impressed actually. She deserves more kudos.

With that said, there were a lotta subject matter experts on this forum before huh?

MJ's genius as an artist was surviving the New Jack Swing Era.
 
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