The Best R&B You Probably Never Heard in 2013

+FE Authenticity • Indianapolis-39
+FE Authenticity tour  (Photo credit: fave :))

A few weeks, back, I wrote about the comatose state of R&B music these days. It was lucky enough to be Freshly Pressed, which inspired a dynamic conversation in the comments section about the evolution of R&B in particular and music in general. I gained a broader perspective discussing and thinking more about the topic.  My amended opinion is that my favorite genre may neither be dead nor comatose, just metamorphosing.

Most of us plaintive fans agreed that we just have to support our favorite artists and hope the record industry takes notice. So I put my money where my mouth is.

While searching for a CD in the store last week, I was flabbergasted to find that R&B has quietly had a solid year of releases with very few radio singles. The artists with new music aren’t artists with little to no cache; these are singers with years of acclaim. I heard about some of the albums from the good folks who commented on my blog. My heart sank. The neo-soul/R&B genre really seems to be suffering from a deaf ear from the radio industry above all else. 

Well, in case you haven’t ventured into a music store recently, I’ve decided to highlight some of the least-promoted new albums from my (past or present) favorite artists. Call it a report from the field. (For all but the first two, I haven’t heard these albums before).

20131111-003322.jpg
I gave myself fountains and pens for my birthday.

Every year for my birthday, I ask for a CD or two, usually somewhere in the spectrum of neo-soul or R&B. This year, I asked for The Foreign Exchange’s recent release, Love in Flying Colors. First of all, I adore front man Phonte Coleman’s voice. He doesn’t run you up and down the vocal ladder, but his tone is smooth and suits his thoughtful lyrics. This album rocks my argyle socks off. I drove all around Atlanta on my birthday looping “Call it Home” and “On a Day Like Today” and had a marvelous time.

I cheated and bought myself Raheem DeVaughn’s A Place Called Loveland when it came out in September, and it’s classic Raheem baby-making music. My favorite jams are “Love Connection” and “Ridiculous.”

Unbeknownst to all and sundry, neo-soul vet Musiq Soulchild teamed up with R&B Diva Syleena Johnson to create a reggae-inspired project titled 9INE, which they apparently recorded in just nine days of recording sessions.

Glenn Lewis, Amsterdam 2002
Glenn Lewis looking adorbs in Amsterdam, 2002
(Photo Credit: Flickr)

I fell in love with Stevie Wonder soundalike Glenn Lewis’ voice back in 2002 and heard nothing from him since. He’s apparently released his third studio album in October, Moment of Truth. I hope his voice still is (the truth).

The Internet, if not the radio, seems to be buzzing about The Robert Glasper Experiment, which I confess to knowing absolutely nothing about. But respected artists like Ledisi, Jill Scott, and Brandy have all been affiliated with him, so he has some clout. His Black Radio 2 just hit stores within the past month.

Self-styled ghetto crooner Jaheim occupies a unique space within R&B. He’s got a solid following and can be heard on black radio stations, but he’s not largely popular. I heard his single “Age Ain’t a Factor” a few months back and it hooked me with the surprising line, “You look better the older you get: Benjamin Button.” For that alone, his sixth studio album, Appreciation Day, should be worth a listen.

Continuing with the theme of rugged R&B, embattled singer Lyfe Jennings has a new CD out called Lucid. Again, I haven’t heard a peep of this effort, so I’m curious to hear what he’s doing vocally on the project.  

Keep in mind that the above R&B albums are the quietest ones released this year, but certainly not the only ones. Mainstream radio and other venues have heavily promoted R&B albums from Janelle Monae, Tamar Braxton, Robin Thicke, Rihanna (although I think she’s pop), Justin Timberlake, The Weeknd, Emeli Sande, and Drake (who is a rapper-turned-singer at this point).

You have your list, good people; go, and may your ears and heart be full of soul.

If I missed any great unheard-of R&B/soul/neo-soul albums released in 2013, shout them out! Who are you loving this year? 

Jonathan Martin and the Loud Silence of Bullying

Miami Dolphins Fin Fest 2013
(Photo credit: dougemacc13)

A set of twin boys brought my life double trouble in the 4th grade. They had skin like rich soil and thick bellies that jiggled when they laughed at me. I met them at the bus stop on the first day of school. I suppose they chose me because I looked 7 when I was 10, all bone and no height to speak of–an easy target. My friends called me Skinny Minnie; the twins were not as kind.

“Look at that girl’s head! It’s huge,” one pointed. He howled and slapped his knee.

“It looks like an egg,” his brother added.

“Do the egghead, do the egghead!” they crowded in on me, singing and dancing the cabbage patch.

My voice disappeared. Stop, I thought. Leave me alone. But there were two of them, and they outweighed me like grapefruits to grapes. So I walked away and let them sing, pretending to ignore it. And every day for months, they would sing “my” song when they saw me. In front of a crowd of classmates. Who laughed. I shrank daily.

I never told anyone: not the bus driver, a teacher, a parent. I figured if I could not say anything to the doughnut ball twins, I could not risk the embarrassment of revealing my own failure.

Last week, I learned about the allegations of bullying levied against NFL Miami Dolphins player Richie Incognito by teammate Jonathan Martin. I have been tweeting and writing and thinking about the scandal ever since. I can’t talk about bullying without speaking my truth. But I was hesitant to tell my own story because I was not brave. I was soft; and my mother didn’t raise no punching bag, but I am all give and no growl.

I read comments on the Martin incident and seethe. The anger starts in my chest and collects in a hot scream at the back of my throat. Martin is a 300-lb football player and he’s letting a grown man threaten him? He should have punched him. He never should have aired the club’s business. Martin is weak. White dude Incognito is more of a black man than half-black Martin. 

English: A graph showing where electronic aggr...
A graph showing where electronic aggression occurs. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Part of this is an indictment on how we juxtapose femininity (soft) and masculinity (tough) and force the male gender into false binaries. We treat men like pincushions. Squash them and squeeze them, because they are men and they are supposed to endure. Be flexible. Bend, don’t break. And if they bleed when we prick them, we call them…soft. Like women. But they are never supposed to express pain healthily, only in physical blows and language that mirrors an aggressor’s venom.

This type of abuse is highly psychological. Yet, society demands that victims, whose emotional strength has been compromised, clamber out of the protective shell they have built and strike. It denies the effect that bullying has on self-esteem and the belief that you can end your torment. Martin may have been the same size as Incognito, but Incognito’s alleged abuse shrank him mentally.

The conventional wisdom is to hit or threaten a bully to make the abuse stop. It is problematic that the solution mimics the cause. I have yet to stuff a punch in a pretty mouth to stem the tide of ugly words. For men–no, people–who refuse to adopt the rhetoric and posture of bullying, there is derision. “You deserve what you get,” their words will all but tell you. No one will back up a snitch and no one will respect a weakling. Martin became a whistle blower knowing that neither his silence nor his honesty would protect him from scorn.

And this is why bullied people wither in silence. The words rattle in the cage of our skulls but the tongue plays possum. There is no safe outlet for men with cracked armor or girls with thin skin and brittle bones. We all have the power to stand up for ourselves until we stop believing that we can. But when agency fails us, that is when we need “friends” to stand in the gap and help stop the abuse, not stand complicit to it. Perhaps their silence, indolent yet menacing, is the loudest blow of all.

My Top 3 “Black Girls Rock” Moments

Finally! That’s what I thought while watching BET’s Black Girls Rock program last Sunday. Finally, black women are allowed space in the media to celebrate the best in themselves and other black women. It was gratifying to see a program that proclaimed we are all that, black girls and women who rock, diamond-strong in the face of adversity.

Read more at MyBlackTresses…

My Secret Reason for Avoiding Beauty Salons

You really gotta trust a woman who’s holding a 400 degree iron near your bare shoulder.

Black people have long respected the sacred spaces of beauty salons and barber shops as locations of empowerment and freedom. We don’t go just to get our hair “did”; we go to get our life right and to testify when it, like our hair, is perfectly laid. We trust our beautician to talk us off the ledge of a bad haircut and a bad life decision. And so a stylist’s chair is a confessional booth and psychologist’s couch rolled into one.

At least, that’s how I think most black women view beauty salons. I wouldn’t know, because I have largely avoided salons for the past seven years. This avoidance coincides with the length of time I’ve had natural hair, but it has less to do with the state of my hair than the state of my personality. I’m an up-do DIYer, a late-night two-strand twister, a woman who prefers seeing money in her account rather than on her head. I might go to a salon once or twice a year to get a trim or a press, but I haven’t been in a salon since December 2012.

Black hair is a family affair.

And the reason? Going to a salon is…well…awkward for me, and I hate how it makes me feel. It’s strange. I love the environment and décor of beauty shops: African art on the walls, women with skin the color of almonds in diva poses, a celebration of pretty things. Fingers massaging my scalp near the nape of my neck take me to a spiritual place. Having someone else’s hands “in my head” is a luxury for which I gladly pay. And tip. But late stylists notwithstanding, the service isn’t what keeps me away.

I am an awkward black girl who doesn’t know how to talk to strangers. And because I don’t go to salons often, the women who do my hair remain just that. I have never experienced the camaraderie with a hair stylist that inspires a client to say, “Girl, let me catch you up on what’s good!” I am too reserved, purse clutched like Kevlar against the black cape draped over me.

She asks me where I want my part. I trace a line on the right side of my head and she nods. Even over the hum of the dryer and the popcorn bursts of laughter from women in stylist-client tandems, the silence blanketing the space between me and her is loud. My tongue sinks to the bottom of my mouth and drowns all the words I would say. I want to be sassy. I want to make her laugh with a bawdy tale of red dresses and heels pointed skyward.

But that’s never been me. Stylists are often fashionable and fancy and up on trendy entertainment–I am none of the above. My gossip is NPR fodder and my funny is a linguistic double entendre. I’ve never seen Real Housewives of Atlanta, I tell her when she asks, hoping for common ground. The note of disappointment in her voice is an F-flat. Oh. Fail.

I battle jealousy when I hear other women speak of their relationships with their hair dressers. They are on first name basis and bestowed with nicknames that you would reserve for girlfriends. Because they are follicle-close, following the strands of each others’ lives to the point where cutting off a stylist feels like betrayal and not business. Not me. I break up with stylists like men do women in Atlanta: no phone calls, no explanations. There are other flat irons in the fire and the market is hot.

“And girl, you’ll never guess what that fool said to me.”

Ultimately, I feel like I am missing out on a special part of black sisterhood. Doing hair is such an intimate act that it feels wrong to sit in that chair and feel isolated by my own doing. I listen to the chatter around me and crack a smile. I want to join the conversation. But I am the black girl who watches the double dutch ropes swinging rhythmically and, intimidated, shuffles crestfallen in the opposite direction.

So I stay away from salons, but I also stay asking, “Who’s your stylist?” in hopes that one referral will lead me to a black magic woman who works wonders on my hair…and my accursed shy tongue.

How do you feel about beauty salons and your hair stylist?