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Racial Discussion on PopR&B Article (Very Interesting)
The color of pop
Defining genres is sometimes black and white
by malcolm venable / metro new york
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SEP 19, 2007
TREND. Remember those early days when Justin Timberlake was a break*out solo artist? He ditched the boy band and linked with the hottest producers in hip-hop and R&B — The Neptunes and Timbaland — to create as some have said, “the album Michael Jackson should have made.”
Timberlake’s first single, “Like I Love You,” featured Clipse, a group who could lazily but fairly be categorized as “gangsta” rappers. His strategy seemed so deliberate. Timberlake may not have been trying to be black, but he was certainly expres*sing a desire to make traditional black music.
“I tried so hard to be an R&B artist,” he told Details in April 2007. “And it was the pop album of the year. That’s the last thing I wanted.”
Timberlake is still stuck in the pop ghetto. For all his beat-boxing, Prince referencing and futuristic, conceptual R&B on his latest “FutureSex/LoveSounds,” he is still considered a pop artist, and, for now, it seems there’s nothing he can do about it.
It’s hard not to wonder then, if the only element keeping Timberlake from being categor*ized as the R&B artist he clearly wants to be is that he’s white. It’s something he has at least considered.
“I think some of the same people who say I wouldn’t get as much attention if I was a black artist are probably the same people who said I copy every*thing Michael Jackson did,” he told Details.
“I think it’s the race card,” says Shaggy Stokes, pro*gram director at pop sta*tion Z104 in the Virginia Beach area. Stokes, just nominated by the Radio and Records Industry Achievement Awards as one of the top five rhyth*mic musical dir*ectors in America, has strong rela*tion*ships with Timbaland and Pharrell Williams and is known for breaking new music. “A lot of people have trouble with the idea of a white R&B artist; they think it’s something strictly done by African-Americans.”
Take Usher, who more or less does exactly what “pop” artist Justin Timberlake does. What’s he called? R&B. Christina Aguilera made one of the strongest R&B records of 2006, “Back to Basics,” which prominently fea*tured beats by DJ Premiere and tribute to scratchy-sounding soul greats like Billie Holiday. What was it called? Pop. If Beyoncé Knowles was white, would she be a pop artist?
Many factors are at play. With hip-hop as a main*stream sound, the lines are fuzzy. Stokes, who defines pop as music everyone — black, white, 15-year-olds to 50-year-olds — is at least fleetingly familiar with, says he thinks where you hear an artist first influences the placement.
“Sometimes, it depends on who you ask and how they feel that day.”
50 Cent started out urban, but like T.I. and Jay-Z, might be pop on occa*sion. But then there are records pop stations won’t touch, says Stokes, who is white, including stuff by UGK or the current hit “Crank Dat Soldier Boy.”
“We’d probably never play Fantasia,” he says, “not because she’s black, but because most people who buy records are young white females, and I don’t know how many white people are going to buy her albums. On the flip side, black people won’t buy Nickelback, and we don’t play that either.”
But music’s racial divisions are changing. Robin Thicke, whom Z104 was one of the first stations in the U.S. to play, is categorized as R&B and got such heavy initial rotation on urban stations fans didn’t know he was white. Rihanna, conversely, is totally pop.
“Before ‘Umbrella,’ the urban audience didn’t deal with her,” Stokes says, and it will be interesting to see how she develops further. For that matter, with Fergie and Nelly Furtado rapping, lines could continue to blur or falter altogether.
“Radio stations across the board don’t care what color you are,” Stokes says. “If it’s a hit record, and that’s your station’s format, play it.”
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