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I was lis­ten­ing to music on one of my Pan­dora stream­ing sta­tions the other day while cook­ing din­ner. I heard a song come on with an “of the moment” sound, but the voice was clearly Whit­ney Hous­ton. I couldn’t dry my hands fast enough so that I could touch the track pad to give the songs a thumbs down. I think the “I must be get­ting old” gene has kicked in because I am increas­ingly dis­mayed with today’s main­stream R&B stylings. It’s all syn­thetic music, and very few peo­ple can actu­ally sing. Let me say it this way. Start­ing a song with a riff and repeat­ing it through­out is not singing — that’s just annoy­ing breath­ing with notes (and not always the right ones).  I think what both­ers me the most is when estab­lished R&B stars think it’s clever to take on the lat­est music fad–be it T-Pain’s auto­tune fool­ish­ness or trick beats. Now, I’ll be the first one to say that I’m a sucker for a good beat, but I also appre­ci­ate the art and craft asso­ci­ated with a deliv­er­ing a good vocal performance.

I can’t lay this all at the feet of T-Pain, Kanye, Pher­rell (whom I love). This cross-over has been going on for years. I’ll spare you the histri­on­ics of rock musi­cians tak­ing their cues (read steal­ing) from blues and gospel music. I’ll stick with con­tem­po­rary R&B. As soon as hip hop was rec­og­nized as a legit­i­mate main­stream music genre, R&B singers and pro­duc­ers went crazy for rap hooks and awk­wardly inserted lyrics. Jodi Whately did a cut with Rakim called Friends. It was prob­a­bly one of the bet­ter blends of R&B and hip hop, but it felt corny and for­mu­laic. As much as that song was at least catchy and mem­o­rable, many oth­ers have failed miserably.

In fair­ness, it’s not just hip hop that has influ­enced (affected) R&B. Well, at least what I con­sider last­ing R&B. Teddy Riley and Phar­rell dra­mat­i­cally altered the sound land­scape in their respec­tive times. Now, it seems even the small­est pro­ducer is impact­ing music and you see copy-cat songs pop­ping up left, right and center.

Of course, all of this likely smacks of me being a bit of a musi­cal purist…and maybe I am. I hon­estly think, there’s room for all the new styles crop­ping up. My 14 year-old son con­stantly reminds me of that. How­ever, as men­tioned above, I can’t imag­ine the main­stream R&B music com­ing out today hav­ing a last­ing impact on its lis­ten­ers. I am encour­aged by a num­ber of neo-soul artists who are mak­ing an earnest attempt to infuse raw tal­ent back into music mak­ing. Although, Musiq threw me for a loop with his lat­est CD.

After that dread­ful song by Whit­ney, a clas­sic song by Maze, Golden Time of Day, smoothed my nerves. It got me to think­ing. That there are a num­ber of groups that have thrived over the years with­out suc­cumb­ing to the pres­sure to change their style to fit the musi­cal fla­vor of the months. Maze is def­i­nitely one of those groups. I popped on YouTube to lis­ten to Golden Time of Day, and came across this 17 year-old clip of Frankie Bev­erly. Check out what he had to say about stay­ing true to your style.

I wish more indi­vid­ual per­form­ers and groups would heed Frankie’s words. Ok, now onto what had me sway­ing while I made red curry chicken with chick­peas and pota­toes. It should be noted that this song was made in 1978. It sounds just as beau­ti­ful and soul­ful over 30 years later.