R&B (Younger Generation’s Style)
I know some of you may, or may not have a issue with this category; but, I don’t care because it’s my blog, and I can write what I want. I’m old enough to have experienced the clear difference between R&B then, and R&B now. They are clearly not the same. In fact, the generational gaps are so huge, they really should have came up with a new name for the current genre they call R&B. Keep in mind, my words are NOT an attack on younger performers/music, I’m just making a case that today’s R&B should be called something different (maybe without the “blues” part). Most of today’s “R&B” sounds more from a branch of hip hop than anything else. Just sayin’.
Ladies, ladies!! If you did not think that Montell Jordon was one of the finest men of the 90s to ever grace hip hop with his presence, something is definitely wrong ? ?. He had the looks and the talent! But, WTF happen to Montell? Once he was burning up the charts in the mid 90s, and now it seems as though he fell off the face of the earth! Well, not exactly, but it sure seems that way. While the music industry has forgotten about him, and just thrown his accomplishments aside like a piece of rag cloth, his fans still remember him.
In 1995, Montell ripped the Billboard charts to shreds, when he released his smash #1 hit, “This Is How We Do It.” In addition, it was #1 on the Canada Dance charts, and #1 in the UK. I need to try and give my readers some perspective as to how massively popular Montell was. First, the song was not only #1 on the Top 100 Charts, it stayed number one for 7 weeks! Some of today’s most memorable hits has NEVER been #1 for seven weeks consecutively! That’s jaw dropping! Another example (just to give you an idea), music streaming wasn’t even a thing in the 90s. In fact, I’m not even sure if it had even started yet. But Spotify has calculated over 86M+ streams to-date. I could only imagine what the numbers are like on other streaming services.
But, Montell didn’t stop there! He had other massive hits as well. Such as his 1998 song “Let’s Ride,” Let’s Ride was one of my least favorites, but never the less, it reached #2 on the Top 100 Charts. In that same year, he released a song that I absolutely loved called “Get It On Tonight,” which reached #4 on the charts! I used to dance to that all the time, the music was so smooth, unique, and groove-able.
Montell Has Written a Book called “Becoming UNFamous.”
Now, albeit, I didn’t read his book, and I’m NOT judging Montell, but from the little I know about his book, it appears VERY typical. In it he talks about how he devoted himself to god and the church, blah blah. We’ve heard that same thing from people such as the late Vanity, of Vanity 6. We also heard the same story from the legendary Al Green. The story is either, they weren’t selling any records anymore, so they “turned their lives over to god;” or something life altering had happened to them, that literally scared them in to the church. I literally feel like I could predict most of the stuff in his book.
Like many other classic artists who moved from one genre to gospel, that magic they once had that gave them the hits we all know and love, usually gets left behind as well. The only thing we can do is reminisce on the oldies that made them great once upon a time. The last I checked, Montell is still married to his wife of 25 years, Kristin Hudson, and they’re both very happy. Good for him.
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Ok. This morning I decided to randomly sync some of my personal music to my Spotify. The first classic that popped up was from Adina Howard! Now, I’m not a huge Adina Howard fan because she was way to explicit for my taste. However, I do acknowledge the fact that she is a very talented singer. But sometimes I used to think she didn’t think so. A lot of artist use explicitness or profanity when their producers think it’s the only way their going to sell records. Then again, I also used to think both her music and persona lowered the standards for younger females (but I digress). Regardless of how I felt about Adina then, I couldn’t deny the awesome grooves of her song “Freak Like Me,” released in 1995, recorded for Elektra Records. Funny thing about this song is that, everything about it was so perfect (melody and composition), I didn’t even realize how explicit it was until I started listening to the words 😀 So many people had a hand on writing this song, and that includes (you’d be surprised to know) the legendary William Bootsy Collins. With so many people collaborating to write this one song for Adina, who would even believed it would hit #2 on the charts!! Well desired though. Very nicely put together! Adina has not had another hit since then. Well, after about 12 years, she has a new album out now called “Resurrection,” looking like a big o’l drag queen if you ask me. Let’s see how it does, but personally I’m not impressed.