Blackstreet.
Since the death of disco at the end of the 70s the state of R&B has been completely, stultifyingly, boring. The singers are OK, the grooves are nice, but the songs…basically, they stink. I can’t think of more than a handful of tracks that could come within lightyears of the hip-hop of the same period, no less the great black pop of the last 40 or 50 years.
And then there’s Blackstreet’s No Diggity.
Blackstreet’s Teddy Riley first became famous as the innovator of New Jack Swing (the marriage of soul and hip-hop). He produced it’s biggest hit (the unbelievable My Prerogative) but I never really warmed to his own work in Guy; kinda dull.
There’s nothing I can tell you about Blackstreet. It seems they had some urban hits, but the only one that poked it head above the index line was No Diggity in 1996. A rap intro by Dr. Dre, a memorable doo-wop feel by the singers (including Riley), and a very, deep, infectious groove, No Diggity made me futilily hopeful that R&B was coming back.
I was wrong. But, for five minutes and four second I could wait.
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On December 6th, 2005 at 12:00 am
umm… pretty awesome post, Fred.
On December 7th, 2005 at 12:00 am
Thank you, uh… Teddy.
On December 17th, 2005 at 12:00 am
Because these posts are about music, do you know the name of the song that is very famous that they play at alot of games? Most of the time they go hey!… there was a starbucks commercial and they made it Hank!. Do you know the name of the real song?