#r-b

Band: Big Punisher

Song: Still Not a Player

Year: 1998

Charts: #24 on the U.S. Hot 100

Remember the late 90's, when rap finally made it mainstream and high school proms were changed forever? Every school dance and hip hop club was—and still is—bumping out this track night after night with college kids blindly chanting "Boricua, morena, boricua, morena" having no idea what they're really saying.

Big Pun originated from Puerto Rico but emerged from the underground rap scene in Bronx in the late 90's. Interestingly enough, he released his own version of this song in '97, but later remixed it and featured R&B singer Joe only to see the new version blow up to #24, and stay charted for more than 23 weeks.

He wasn't a player, but he was big. Very big. In fact, Big Pun struggled with his weight most of his life. That's what made him Big Pun, but it also made him morbidly obese. According to his close friend and fellow rapper Fat Joe, "He would eat eight Big Macs, four super-sized fries plus two strawberry milkshakes." Pun enrolled in a weight loss program in North Carolina and lost 80lbs but later quit the program and gained it all back. On February 7, 2000 at the age of 28, Big Pun died of a heart attack. At the time of his death he weighed 693 pounds, and it took 20 men to carry his coffin.

If you want to relive your Big Pun memories rent Moesha, Big Pun: The Legacy or the direct-to-video ghetto classic Urban Menace (watch trailer), starring Pun alongside icons like Snoop Dogg and Ice-T. Oh, and about the whole "Boricua, morena" thing at the end of the song: "Boricua" is how Puerto Ricans proudly identify themselves, and "morena" is slang for a latin woman with dark eyes/hair.

The R&B group you never knew existed

Band: The S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M.

Song: It's Gonna Be A Lovely Day

Year: 1992

Charts: #34 in the U.S.

Before Whitney Houston went all "Crack is wack" on us with her marriage to Bobby Brown and rampant drug use, she starred along side Kevin Costner in the 1992 blockbuster film The Bodyguard. And the soundtrack for this movie sold gazillions of copies to become the best selling movie soundtrack of all time. My dad even had this soundtrack, and that's saying something.

Track 9 on this album was a rap remake of a Bill Wither's song from the 70s, retitled "It's Gonna Be A Lovely Day" by a group named The S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M. Lead vocalist Michelle Visage headed up the R&B group, which basically seemed to be a rag tag pairing of a bunch of wannabe stars and back-up vocalists. But riding the coat tails of Whitney Houston's success, this song made it to #34 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #1 on the Hot Dance Club Play chart. (Is that the chart used for strip clubs?)

To survive, music genres stick to other sounds, they evolve and turn themselves into other thing they weren’t before, on this note its logical that a genre so popular in the past like R&B evolved into new sounds and new forms of experimentation, that’s how in 2010 not only did Lo-Fi projects like How To Dress Well started creating a notoriety towards .R&B in the indie scene, but also started putting an end to the prejudice for some years I feel everyone has been putting to the genre.

I remember loving R&B even before loving hip hop, artists like Erykah Badu, Sade, Lauryn Hill or R. Kelly had this sort of pure vibe of hip hop but apparently that got old and R&B started to mix with pop, and some of them were nice, like Justin Timberlake bringing sexy back, but the thing is that R&B up until How To Dress Well was losing its appeal to the indie and underground movements, somehow it became too mainstream.

With the mainstream appeal of R&B is no wonder that Dub Step have had such a fast and consolidated growth the last years, and I say Dub Step because it doesn’t have the hip hop beats, and it kind of sounds like hip hop sometimes but has a bit more soul and rhythm, just like R&B, that’s why for some it might be a surprise to listen the new James Blake for some, if How To Dress Well was the R&B Lo-Fi attempt of R&B lacking production, James Blake is the sublimation of the sound.

Some songs recall sounds of Bon Iver and have a very experimental and ethereal edge abruptly interrupted by walls of sound and distortions of different kinds, also the most amazing surprise is that this UK DJ now sings and boy what a voice, the series of EP’s he had released last year capture his ability to create an atmosphere, his ability to make echo, void, emotions into sound with very few lyrics and voices, and for this LP the voice is used as one port part of the intentional atmosphere.

Some are saying that it lacks a concept, that is just a display of well produced sounds and that James Blake fans will say things like “you’re missing the concept dude…you just don’t get it”, my saying goes beyond…what is it to get? Why does it need to have a concept when what’s on display has enough quality to make you fall deeply in love with it, if so, the emotions and free interpretations are what this LP is all about, amazingly good echoes, amazing vertigo playing with silence and sounds, really good intervention of a really amazing vocals and even some piano ballads.

This is yet another amazing album of 2011, and if things keep going this way we’ll have a milestone in music history…the year is starting and there is still more to come.