It’s tempting to read Beyoncé’s hard edges as an attempt to ride the success of Rihanna or Miley Cyrus’ risqué agendas—but to do so would be to look past the album’s true provocations. Beyoncé pushes boundaries not because it sells sex at every turn, but because it treats a power-balanced marriage as a place where sexuality thrives. At a time when when young people are gripped by an ideological fear of monogamy’s advertised doldrums, Beyoncé boldly proposes the idea that a woman’s prime—personal, professional, and especially sexual—can occur within a stable romantic partnership. Monogamy has never sounded more seductive or less retrograde as when dictated on Beyoncé's terms. The innuendo can be bawdy and overblown—"Can you lick my Skittles/ That's the sweetest in the middle" on "Blow"—but sincerely so. And who would allow Jay Z’s instantly infamous breasts/breakfast line anywhere near the stargazing boom of “Drunk in Love” but someone truly infatuated with him? What’s more is that the erotic themes don’t feel out-of-step with the album’s more decorous moments, like the stadium-filling “XO” or “Blue”, its requisite treatise on motherhood. In Beyoncé’s world, there are illicit doors to be unlocked in the halls of tradition and vice versa.
Like, how is that inorganic? Most people can go from being happy to horny to emotional to reflective to in-love relatively easily. UNA was a reflection of her life in 2012. She was a 24 year-old dealing the death of her grandmother, and was contemplating a relationship with her ex-boyfriend- someone who had been under constant media scrutiny for years, partially because of her. This is one of the weirdest complaints I see about Rihanna. People don't work the way Public Relations companies want you to think they do. People, let alone celebrities, are rarely consistent and logical.
The idea is that she ruins the atmosphere of anything remotely poignant or pertinent to her own personal struggles by making pointless, filler ratchet party songs. There's no real streamlining or depth to the album. It's just a pastiche of all these flashes of ideas and there's no cohesion whatsoever imo.
The experience and emotions tied to listening to Kid A are like witnessing the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on Imax. It's an album of sparking paradox. It's cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike, infinite yet 48 minutes. It will cleanse your brain of those little crustaceans of worries and inferior albums clinging inside the fold of your gray matter. The harrowing sounds hit from unseen angles and emanate with inhuman genesis. When the headphones peel off, and it occurs that six men (Nigel Godrich included) created this, it's clear that Radiohead must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who. Breathing people made this record! And you can't wait to dive back in and try to prove that wrong over and over.
The idea is that she ruins the atmosphere of anything remotely poignant or pertinent to her own personal struggles by making pointless, filler ratchet party songs. There's no real streamlining or depth to the album. It's just a pastiche of all these flashes of ideas and there's no cohesion whatsoever imo.
I think there's a lot of depth behind the album. Just because there aren't a million metaphors and "artistic" meanings with every song, that doesn't mean there isn't any depth
The idea is that she ruins the atmosphere of anything remotely poignant or pertinent to her own personal struggles by making pointless, filler ratchet party songs. There's no real streamlining or depth to the album. It's just a pastiche of all these flashes of ideas and there's no cohesion whatsoever imo.
Diamonds, Stay, Love Without Tragedy,/Mother Mary, Half Of Me, Get It Over With, Nobodys Business, Loveeeee Song all express her
One of the few times I've actually cared enough to pay attention to P4K.
Quote:
Miguel
Kaleidoscope Dream
RCA; 2012
By Andrew Ryce; October 4, 2012
8.4 BEST NEW MUSIC
Since his debut in 2010 with the outstanding "Sure Thing", the young Los Angeles singer/songwriter Miguel has been something of a for-the-R&B-heads-only sleeper star. He showed up armed with a guitar, an endearing croon that is both virtuosic and everyman, a coiffed haircut, and a slightly retro sensibility. His voice is an elastic thing that's rarely used to excessive effect; he avoids the histrionic R. Kelly worship of so many of his compatriots in favor of the school of smooth Sam Cooke ad-libs. And though his lyrics are full of silly puns and earnest platitudes, he takes sex very seriously: He's a happily-married man in a genre full of lascivious bachelors, and his best music radiates maturity, self-assured and confident but rarely showy. But despite his obvious talent, he hasn't quite been able to break through to a wider audience.
Miguel's 2010 debut album, All I Want Is You, was flanked with some stellar singles but weighed down by a lack of identity as he flitted from producer to producer. It sounded like he couldn't decide whether he wanted to be a Salaam Remi faux-nostalgia crooner or a smart hip-hop crossover star, and the indecision hung over the record like a cloud (it didn't perform well commercially either). He returned earlier this year with a free trio of EPs under the self-conscious title of Art Dealer Chic, showing a newfound entrepreneurial sensibility and a streak of independence. Those mostly self-produced songs at times sounded like rough sketches, but they made it up for it by sounding personal and liberated from the demands of the industry. Free and widely available, they earned him some well-deserved re-examination. They also contained his best songs to date. And now, with his second full-length, he's delivered on that early promise.
Kaleidoscope Dream starts off with "Adorn", also found on the first Art Dealer Chic EP. It's one of the giddiest love songs of the year, a track where ecstatic infatuation is hemmed in by Miguel's understated vocal dexterity, and this album feels like its proper context. He rockets off into falsetto for irresistibly brief moments, and a new outro spirals elegant, trained vocal gymnastics around the song's chorus. "Adorn" also showcases Miguel's secret weapon: modesty. It's definitively, deceptively simple, a nugget of concentrated sunshine, and not necessarily all that original. But I'll be damned if it doesn't pull you in and make you feel it.
That touch of modesty colors most of Kaleidoscope Dream. There's the tender "Use Me" where he admits being nervous about having sex with the lights on. Even more affecting is the acoustic murmur "***** Is Mine", which deflates masculinized hip-hop tropes with insecurity, pleading, "Tell me that the ***** is mine/ 'Cause I don't wanna believe that anyone is just like me." The sentiment turns sardonic on the Ryan Leslie-like jaunt of "How Many Drinks?", where gorgeous falsetto verses are offset by uncertain pleas of "I don't wanna waste my time."
The plush, lightly psychedelic production buffers the record's more barebones moments, and Miguel's precocious vocals take flight on the bombast rather than drowning in it. Standout "Do You..." unfolds in an ethereal cloud of synth, voices streaming like angelic choirs before stumbling into a verse buoyed by its own euphoria. Not many singers could get away with lines like "What about matinee movies/ Pointless secrets/ Midnight summer swim, private beaches/ Rock, paper, scissors/ Wait! best outta three!" It's the stuff of unbearable rom-com montages, but Miguel's playful delivery brings it over. He's the rare vocalist who makes you feel what he's singing about, even when his lyrics can be transparent. When he wants to sound deadly serious, he's on the verge of tears; when he's happy, he's practically laughing as he sings.
Kaleidoscope Dream has elements of the sort of tasteful R&B record that the Grammys love, but much like Beyoncé's 4, it cuts through its own statuesque stateliness with raw emotion reined in by an ever-present sense of professionalism. And it succeeds in part because it sounds like Miguel's album and no one else's. There are no intrusive guest appearances, and the record sounds even less of its time than the first, reveling in its own contextual vacuum with abandon. Though there are some unexpected choices. Like "Don't Look Back", which is propped up by grand synth runs before melting into an interpolation of the Zombies' "Time of the Season". That song's musky psychedelia is a good example of the record's overarching theme, the highly sexualized seen through the lens of the eager and innocent.
When Miguel isn't accompanied by glossy synths, the music is all about intimacy. Take "Arch & Point"-- with a simple rasp, strum, and metronome, it sounds like it was recorded in the very bedroom it's ostensibly taking place in. "When it feels this good then it just comes natural," he insists, and there's not a better ethos for where his career stands at this point. Emerging unscathed from middling mainstream performance, Kaleidoscope Dream sounds, at its utmost, natural and easy, an artist set free to do what he wants and proving himself every bit the unique voice his debut seemed to deny. It's respectful of tradition, quietly ambitious, and deeply personal, a wonderfully considered album from an artist who was starting to seem a lot like a forgotten gem in the wake of mishandled promotion.
Mother Mary, I swear I wanna change
Mister Jesus, I'd love to be a queen
But I'm from the left side of an island
Never thought this many people would even know my name
As time flies, way above me
For you I've cried, tears sea-deep
Oh glory, the prayers carry me
I'll be a star, you keep directing me
Let's make the best scene they've ever seen
I think there's a lot of depth behind the album. Just because there aren't a million metaphors and "artistic" meanings with every song, that doesn't mean there isn't any depth
exactly...it means that Rihanna isnt that deep
Had she done some Lana Del Rey type ****...that wouldve been inauthentic...she kept it true to herself
Toward the end of her turgid seventh album, Unapologetic, Rihanna sings a grim rhetorical: "What's love without tragedy?" But the real question that she and her songwriters seem to be posing on Unapologetic is, "Who is Rihanna without Chris Brown?"
