Definition of R&B
 

It occurred to me recently that a good deal of the stuff on the radio that is widely labelled "r&b" is not actually r&b at all! It's just singing on top of hip-hop styled drum beats, in fact often even the beats are just standard 4/4 with no hip-hop stylings at all. Basically it's just your regular modern-day urban pop music. I really see no justification for such usage of the r&b label whatsoever.

What do others think.

well ya that's a given..
i also realised the same thing when i watched this documentary with ruth brown in it...she was an r'nb singer when the term first came out in them ole days...at the peak of ray charles' career.
i mean if that's the definition of the term, then all those 90s bands like boys II men blackstreet and tlc that have been labelled r'nb aren't r'nb either!...the insanity

I would personally go as far as to say that much of todays music on the radio really shouldn't be classified as music at all.

Well that's a pretty purist way of looking at it - I mean, music's music at the end of the day. Whether or not it has any artistic value, another matter entirely.

But yeah, being pretty devoid of either rhythm or blues, it doesn't really seem worthy of being called "rhythm and blues".

yep music is music. even if ya dont like it. i dont like country or R&B but im not gonna put it down and say its not music. i just dont listen to it. its that simple.

Well, R'n'B isn't explicity called rhythm and blues.

It's called R'n'B and I expect the change in the standard naming came partly from the same reasoning you just mentioned. Regardless, names don't have to accurately describe or sum up what they apply to. They can just be names.

Rock music doesn't usually involve rocks (unless the band have been enjoying some 'chinese rocks'). Metal music does, agreed, use things made with metal. But they are less metallic than the instruments used for jazz... and punk musicians tend to carry more metal upon their person than those in metal bands.

Well firstly, it's "rock" in the verbal sense to rock - not the geological. I would hope you were being facetious, though.

Anyway, yes, it's true that names don't have to accurately describe what they apply to. However, once a name is adopted, becomes a part of accepted terminology and takes on a certain meaning, it would be unusual to begin to misplace it so far away from thoseoriginal connotations. Like if we from this point on began to call rap music "heavy metal", virtually everybody would object.

Even with all that said, it is true that language and meanings of words can shift and evolve. In that case, I guess my main point is that modern usage of "r&b" really has no connection to the former usage of it at all, and essentially is just a new umbrella term for urban pop.

The modern term 'R&B' has no relation to 60's R&B, as far as I'm concerned.
In fact, it confuses the shit out of me.

I'd rather it was re-named...Cheesy Shite!

Rant Time.

To me it's like Green Day, spawning a thousand bands...all under the banner of punk.
Imagine that!
The modern definition of R&B, offends me.

Well, get unoffended because its a very widespread nomenclature.

Yes, modern R'n'B doesn't sound like 60's R'n'B. At all. Really the main connection is that the R'n'B scenes were predominantly started by black people in the US* and at least the name shows there was an evolution and inspiration from the old to the new. Even if you don't think the new is anywhere near as good.

The new music might be produced with a very pop-styled mix but it still has strong blues influences in terms of the notes used in the melodies and a lot of the song subjects (well, rather people still sing about the blues and use a lot of 'blue' notes in the music). So to that extent it can lay claim to the word 'blues' in its title. Its not an old grouchy man playing a pained, lonesome guitar solo, but it still has a large component of blue.

The word rhythm is a bit more misused but, well, there are rhythms in it even if the rhythm section isn't generally very interesting. I'd say the same thing about 60's R'n'B though**, so it's not any greater misuse of words. The name R'n'B applied to modern music isn't as nonsensical as people suggest and, furthermore, I predict it will be in use for some time yet so get over it.


*Yes, I know about you and your Northern Soul, RT.
**If you compare it to Jazz or Drum'n'Bass in particular.

Now THAT I'll dispute. The songs in general use neither blues progressions nor blues-inspired melodies. And generally they don't sing about being "blue", either, any more than any other genre of music. In fact the lyrics are usually about topics the pretty damn opposite of being "blue".

Even if your argument in that respect holds, it fails to explain or justify the application of the term as it is frequently used: i.e., as an umbrella term to cover ALL music that have singing (as opposed to rap) over hip-hop drum beats.

I was just thinking, I'm going from the categorisation as they have them in record shops here. I think a lot of what is listed as R'n'B in America, but which sounds like pop, just gets put straight into the pop section in the UK so there might be some crossed wires between the two of us.

I'll go and have a look.

Looking at the first list I found (http://www.onlylyrics.com/g_rnb1.php) which was the first one I saw.... There are some who do use a lot of blue (note: blue, not traditional 'blues') notes and themes and some who don't. The ones who don't are the same ones that would be straight in the 'pop' section over here anyway.

Now, I'm suggesting here that the majority of western music uses melodies, scales and harmonies which can be roughly categorised as:

Classical (straightforward major or minor scales and chord structures)
Folk (modes)
Jazz
Blues

In which most pop acts fall on the classical side, using the major or minor scales in a pretty straightforward way. From memory, the melodies for songs like 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' (Britney) and 'You And Your Hand' (Pink) wouldn't sound very out of place as the theme to some Rimsky Korsakov Russian nationlist stomper, in that they make very clear use of minor scales and are very on-note.

Back to the list,

some of the singers just sing pop music. It's major of minor melodies, maybe it has sad themes but then so does lots of non-blues music:

Monica (from what I remember hearing)
Jamelia
Kelly Rowland

Are all, from the music I've heard in the last few years, just pop. I'm pretty sure they are in the pop section in shops over here, not R'n'B. Either way, that's where I'd put them.

On the other hand.

Ashanti
Kelis
Amerie
Lemar
Beyonce
John Legend
Amy Winehouse
Corinne Bailey Rae
Mary J Blige

All have lots of blue notes and in their music. I'm not claiming they have BB King solos, sing about shootin' their woman or meeting the devil at the crossroads. But why would they? Most of the singers are women who live a long way from any rural intersections. A lot of the harmonies, rhythms and melodies ARE derived from blues* ... if they're not from there then where ARE they from?

*Ok, gospel too, which may be more classical than blues.


If it's got rhythm (the drum beats) and it's got blues inspired singing (with which gospel-inspired vocals end up being grouped largely because the singers are also black) then the name R'n'B, I repeat, is not an unrealistic name to give it. Yes, I expect there are better names that it could have and some people have issue with the current name. But R'n'B is the name that has stuck and it's not a completely innacurate one.

Ok, your argument is fair enough. The label isn't really completely inaccurate; my own view though is that as an ALL-ENCOMPASSING term, "Urban Pop" does the job a whole lot better. Especially considering that you frequently even find tracks like Akon's "Smack That" being called R'n'B.

As for the harmonies, I think that the reference to gospel you made was a good point - actually I think the harmonies are arguably more gospel-derived than blues-derived. Though above all, I'd say that the harmonies show more 80s soul influence (though yeah, you could equally point out that soul was partly derived from the blues - though it went its own way).

Incidentally, I seem to remember that when this sort of music started getting more mainstream in the early/mid nineties (such as back when Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me" was all the rage), people I knew would refer to it as "swing", or even "hip hop" (as in soul with hip hop beats) - I never heard the term R'n'B being used really popularly until a good deal later down the line. Though maybe I just missed it.

We don't we really use R n' B as a term to classify music over here. All of that stuff gets filed under Urban which is a f***ing stupid name because the Velvet Underground were about as urbanised as you can get (they were from New York for christs sake!) yet theyre in the rock/pop section.

You never Dock Boggs and Woody Guthrie filed under the Rural section do you?

Id call it contemporary soul but I don't think theres much soul in a lot of it so its a misnomer.

Yeah, well good points there. Urban is a difficult term, too. I guess it refers to urban more in the sense of music with "street" culture influences as opposed to suburban.

i never thought when they use the term urban & got it confused with suburban. whoever thinks that is not to smart. ya can clearly tell urban has something to do with street. but you'll see some music classifid as it when it really isnt.

They did have "street" influences, they had a song about going uptown to score smack. Thats a bit of "street" reporting every bit as much as the rap stuff.

R&H? Harmony? Maybe but blues? nope! I disagree with this genre name completely.

Going uptown to SCORE it = surburban
Going uptown to SELL it = urban

Is this true, Urban? Make much of a living pushing smack on the mean streets of St. Peter Port?

My only real point by that was that a song talking about going TO the city and buying drugs for recreational use sounds like more of a suburban sort of topic, or at least not specifically urban. In contrast to lyrics that reference drug-dealing, which are characteristically urban.