preview

R & B Music Analysis

Decent Essays

New Edition The New Edition was one of the premier R&B groups to exist. The group reached its height of popularity during the 1980s. They were the progenitors of the boy band movement of the 1980s and 1990s and led the way for groups like New Kids on the Block, The Boys, Boyz II Men, Hi-Five, Backstreet Boys and NSYNC. Their music was intrinsic and exemplified what R&B was during that time period. Their song’s, like “Hear Me Out” and even “Candy Girl”, were R&B songs that represented all I’ve spoken to. Their music, while having a funky feel to it, represented soulful music, which spoke to the theme of love and even represented the harmonizing of a boy band, just like that in jazz. Their music presented a desire for deep reflection, such …show more content…

They present topics of love and love lost as well as present music techniques such as echoing and harmonizing to present the listener with a soulful experience that allows the listener to deeply reflect on the music. Today, the music has taken a turn to mimic that of hip-hop and pop music. This change presents a greater variety of musical themes in R&B and has presented a more lubricious representation of the music that is represented by topics of sex and the desire for sex. This change in the music is a depiction of the change in the urban culture in which R&B is based. The culture, like that of the music, has changed to represent a new time in which the desire for a woman is stronger than the desire to be in love with a woman. Additionally, it is due to this change that the desire for soul in R&B has diminished in popularity. The urban culture doesn’t represent a desire for soulful uplifting, but desires music that promotes their desire to dance, do drugs, and engage in healthy sex. This results in the music’s reduction in the depth of the music and the feelings of the music, and a rise in music that makes you want to get up and move. This change represents the current day diaspora of African Americans. This is represented in the belief that the music no longer displays the desire for love and longer-term happiness and now represents the desire for short-term happiness, fun, and the avoidance of topics that present feelings of loss or sadness. Instead, the music today represents the avoidance of love and the hardships that come with it because with everything else felt by urban African Americans, the hardships of love have now become undesirable. It is in this way that the change of R&B represents not only a change in culture for the US as a whole, but also the change in the diaspora that is felt by African

Get Access