The boundaries of neo-soul and hip hop

I was struck by this assignment on genre and my own misgivings on not only what counted as "genre" but what was defensible and could be critically analyzed. I was reminded of a quote by The Mars Volta frontman, Cedric Bixler-Zavala about how there are no more genres, that they've all blended together. (Try putting The Mars Volta in a genre. Yeah.) Latin pop explosion, hip hop, pop-- no, I said, how were Ricky Martin and Shakira and Jennifer Lopez in the same category when the first two were wildly popular in their own right before they were popular in the U.S., we just did our assignment on hip hop, and this entire course is about critically engaging with the idea of the "popular".

This conflict exemplifies the sticky nature of genre-- who defines it, how comfortable the artists are with the label, and what kinds of marketing and identity politics play into the labels. I find I've been attracted more and more lately to artists that seem to often publicly chafe at their genre labels. Erykah Badu and Santigold immediately came to mind.

"neo-soul is dead"

The label "neo-soul" was coined by Kedar Massenburg, the president of the label that signed Badu, to market herself and D'Angelo. Since then, tons of artists have been slapped with a "neo-soul" label, seemingly characterized by smooth-ish vocals and some kind of deeper storytelling at play. Erykah Badu's On and On even explicitly opens its video with "a story by Erykah Badu", her "Bag Lady" video intentionally evokes Ntozake Shange's chorepoem (another defiance/ redefinition of genre) "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf" down to having a lady in red, etc. There's a deeper story and a deeper emotion in these songs and videos, even the more mainstream break-up songs like Maxwell's Pretty Wings.

It almost seems a bit elitist, this definition of neo-soul-- here is the *real* music, the real black pop music that is deeper, tells a story, takes care with its production, etc-- as opposed to that poppy, mainstream, watery R&B. It seems this definition of neo-soul is born of a yearning for creativity and innovation in the landscape of popular black music. In 2001, Mark Anthony Neal's album review of Res illustrates this frustration:

"Though neo-soul and its various incarnations has helped to redefine the boundaries and contours of black pop, often the most popular of these recordings like Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite, India.Arie's Acoustic Soul and Musiq Soulchild's Aijuswanaseing exist comfortably alongside the trite blah, blah, blah of the 112s and Destiny Childs of the world. Just a small reminder that "difference" is often only valued when it smells, taste and sounds like the same old same old. And even when artists break the mold, as Maxwell did with Urban Hang Suite and D'Angelo with Brown Sugar, they are expected to remain true to that formula lest they risk the critical backlash that both faced in the aftermath of artistically compelling projects like Embrya and Voodoo, respectively. The bottom line is that contemporary R&B and the radio and video programmers responsible for making that music available to listeners and viewers remain trapped in a small black box largely informed by hip-hop bottoms and Blige-like histrionics with traces of Luther and Whitney and enough tone deafness to have Clara Ward, Mahailia Jackson, and Sam Cooke turn twice in their graves about every four and a half minutes. With such a small margin to work with the seminal hybrid-soul of Lenny Kravitz, The Family Stand, Seal, Corey Glover, Me'Shell N'degeocello, Dionne Farris, Michael Franti (both the Disposable Heroes and Spearhead), and even Wyclef Jean has been consistently marginalized save an occasional MTV buzz clip and the hordes of "pomo-bomos" like myself who continue to crave great "black" music even if it don't sound like Marvin Gaye or Aretha Franklin. Shareese Renee Ballard (Res) refuses to be placed in that "black little box" as evidenced by her genre-bounding, eclectic debut How I Do."

The ways in which the R&B label itself is racialized (think of the exceptionalism of Robin Thicke and his brand of "blue-eyed soul") is critiqued by Res: "I'm a black chick and I'm cute. I mean I'm not busted or anything, you know?. I could sing R&B if I wanted to and it would be kinda nice, I think, but that's not me. I mean it's music, you know? F*ck R&B. F*ck alternative. F*ck the rock and roll world. Just do what makes you feel good."

The review by Mark Anthony Neal simultaneously praises innovation and genre-bending music by Res and even those who would fit the neo-soul label, and then gently mocks Res' collaborator, Santi White for her own genre-bending: "On the lyrical tip, Res was largely assisted by her Philly homie Santi White who is currently lead vocalist of the alternative-soul band (whatever the hell that means) Stiffed." Santi White would go on to become Santigold (first Santogold, then to avoid a copyright lawsuit, Santigold), still a black girl who chafed at the R&B label. She suggested that labeling her music as "just" hip hop was racist in a number of interviews, going on to state in 2008 that "People are really quick to throw me in that 'soul singer–hip-hop' category. I grew up hugely influenced by hip-hop but I was not drawing on any hip-hop directly on this record, just my whole musical development was based on a hip-hop aesthetic."

The complexity of influence and genre is really interesting to unpack in this quote. What is the hip hop aesthetic? Is it a kind of swagger, an attitude? Is it the feel of her work? I can't say that I understand what she means by it, though I understand her claiming multiple influences-- "dub, punk, new wave, and electronic" in particular. People have compared Santigold's music to The Pixies, whom she holds as an influence. Her funky, electronica sounds in L.E.S. Artistes and Creator have been compared to M.I.A., while her track Shove It was sampled by Jay-Z. Santigold claims an influence of the "hip hop aesthetic" but chafes at being defined within the genre. Erykah Badu likes the term neo-soul, but doesn't like fitting into its box.

Maybe the application of these genre terms goes back to what both of these artists talk about--marketing and selling their album. Erykah Badu attributes the marketing of herself and D'Angelo as neo-soul to the president of her label, while Santigold states: "I don’t wanna be a salesperson for my album. I think people should only buy my record if they like my record...So many people are bullied by A&R people and restrictions within the industry and genres and fitting into these neat boxes. I didn’t want to do it [music] unless it was on my own terms."

Shakira - Ojos Así (Eyes Like That/ Yours)

Embedding disabled on this video - Shakira performing Ojos Así on MTV Unplugged


Note: Translations based on my understanding of Spanish. The Modern Standard Arabic translation is from a graduate student at UNC, confirmed by the translations on the internet. Of particular note, I think, is the gender of the Arabic translation-- there are some translations that say "in *his* eyes", but the gendered pronoun ending in Arabic is clearly saying "in *her* eyes."

MTV Unplugged is often set up as a somewhat intimate venue with a small audience; the tv audience is invited to feel as though they have an opportunity to spend some time with their favorite artists. I have in mind iconic performances of Nirvana and Lauryn Hill-- somehow semi-last performances with tons of emotions stick in my mind the most. While those artists seemed stripped down to their bare emotion, Shakira seems-- not precisely subdued, but certainly a bit more contemplative. She is typically a woman who somehow exudes strength -- particularly physical prowess, but for some reason she conveys a certain level of competence and poise in her public appearances. Her IQ is rumored to be high (140, so state the media rumors), and while I don't place much importance on questionably structured standardized tests, she conveys a level of depth in her performance I think is rare for an artist that produces such wildly popular music.

Ojos Así is an extraordinarily poetic song that Shakira has remixed in several different versions. While there is a certain level of poetry in wildly popular music, I do think layers of meaning are rarer in a music culture that has gradually fought to redefine "obscenity" and socially acceptable directness, sometimes resulting in cruder constructions of human emotion and relationships. Sweet bubblegummy ballads sometimes lack a level of subtlety, but this song starts off with a metaphor:
"Ayer conocí un cielo sin sol / y un hombre sin suelo -- Yesterday I met a sky without sun / and a man without shame " -- That second line, "and a man without shame", could literally be translated as "a man without a floor," to contrast with the sky-- "el cielo"-- which could also be translated as a ceiling. The double entendres continue throughout the song, which intermixes Spanish with a short Arabic bit in the middle, presumably sung by the man whose eyes she has fallen in love with: "Lord of the sky, I'm calling you / In her eyes I see my life / I come to you from this universe / Oh God, please answer my call." The Arabic, while sometimes misunderstood in some fan circles as Lebanese colloquial / aamiyah, is actually Modern Standard Arabic / fusHa, a form that is often almost poetic by default.

In other live performances of this song, Shakira is much more flashy-- on her Fijacion Oral tour in 2007-2008, she performed in front of huge crowds. She prefaced this song with a "veil dance" to the song Enta Omri by the famed Arab singer Umm Kulthum. However, in accordance to this more intimate setting, she is far more laid back in this performance. She is performing an entire set in the same casual chic outfit (leather pants, boots, and a long-sleeved t-shirt), rather than multiple flashy costume changes befitting a worldwide tour. Accordingly, her dance moves are less flashy. Her bellydancing skills are no less impressive, but her repertoire of "crowd-pleasing" moves is not used in this performance. While I am no expert on belly dancing, I have enough of a familiarity with it to understand some degree of the technical skill required for some of her moves in this MTV Unplugged video, and am more impressed by some of her dancing than I am by her veil performance. Props and flashy clothing can often make up for lack of technical skill, though this is of course by no means true in Shakira's case as she lives up to her fame as an excellent dancer. In general, however, her moves remind me less of a highly choreographed set and more of friends hanging out at a party and dancing.

The tempo is even slowed down a bit for this version. Shakira seems not to have choreographed her opening dance moves, she seems to just flow with the music, as if she is hanging out with her friends. Her intensity as she focuses her vibratto on the lyrics seems more filled with emotion than when she is performing this song to bigger crowds, or even in the scripted music video. While it is not her flashiest, stagiest performance, I really appreciate the emotional resonance of this version, and I can feel the story and poetry of her infatuation / love / longing for this man, a man that seems to represent something so much larger that he somehow has a background chorus substituting for his voice (the background Arabic bit at 1:46).