Switched on Pop - ICYMI: Chance The Rapper, Kehlani, & The Shifting Sound of R&B — with Oak Felder

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

The sound of R&B is difficult to pin down. Since the 1950s, the label has been used both as a genre and as a catch-all for the entirety of black popular music. Soul, funk, disco and even hip-hop have at times been covered by this "R&B" umbrella. On Chance The Rapper's new album, The Big Day, all of these influences come through—and he's not alone. On recent Kehlani records, 90s R&B and 2000s trap both play a role. But both these artists are a far cry from the 50s R&B sounds of Sam Cooke. To understand how R&B has changed over time, we consult with Trevor Anderson, manager of Billboard's R&B/Hip Hop chart. Then we speak with R&B super-producer Oak Felder to understand how R&B is progressing and what it might become. Songs Discussed Chance The Rapper – Hot Shower Chance The Rapper – I Got You Sam Cooke – You Send Me Elvis Presley – Crying In the Chapel The Temptations – I Can’t Get Next To You Mtume – Juicy Fruit Biggie – Juicy Toni Braxton – Breath Again Janet Jackson – That’s The Way Love Goes Boys II Men – I’ll Make Love To You Lauryn Hill – Doo Wop (That Thing) Diddy – I’ll Be Missing You (feat. Faith Evans & 112) Nelly – Dilemma Kehlani – Distraction SWV – Weak Aaron Hall – I Miss You Usher – You Make Me Wanna Brandy – Sit-in Up In My Room Dru Hill – In My Bed Silk – Freak Me Demi Lovato – Sorry Not Sorry Jodeci – Cry For you Mariah Carey – Vision of Love Kehlani Everything Is Yours Chance The Rapper – All Day Long Queen – Fat Bottom Girls Diana Ross – I’m Coming Out For an in depth history of R&B on Billboard, read Chris Molanphy's feature on Pitchfork. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We're doing live musical readings based on our book. We'll be in New York on January 10th, Los Angeles on January 17th, Seattle on January 21st, and Berkeley on January 23rd. You can see all details at switchtimepop.com slash events. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Okay, so this week I've been listening to Chance the Rapper's new album, The Big Day.

And it's made me deeply question everything I thought I knew about genre. Cool. So check this out. Yeah. Here's his top charting song right now, Hot Shower. Hot damn hot water, hot shower. Hot land of smoking green cauliflower. Tangerine, yeah, I call it sweet and sour.

Wait, you said this is a top charting song? Yeah, it's on the billboard, and it's both on the Hot 100 and on the R&B and hip-hop chart. This is a fun track. I mean, it takes me back to like early hip-hop in his delivery, but then there's this trap element here with those rattling high hats. I'm into this. I'm glad this is doing well. Okay, but then get this. Just a few songs later, you get something like, I got you.

always and forever. I love this too, but it's like completely different. Or it's old school, but in a new jack swing kind of way, like early 90s R&B or something. Exactly. And so this has got me thinking, what kind of music is this album? Chance obviously calls himself a rapper, but I also love when his flow merges into song. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He has a really great sing-songy voice as well.

And his music clearly blends between gospel, hip-hop, funk. There's even some disco on this album. Hell yeah, there is. And obviously R&B. And I thought maybe we could consult the Billboard to see where these songs were charting and maybe that would help us understand how other people are perceiving the genre in Chances Record. Okay. So the album is number two on the Billboard 200 and three of the songs are actually on the Hot 100, which is the like the mega chart tracking the hot singles. And four of the songs, Handsome,

do you remember all day long and hot shower are all charting on the Billboard R&B slash hip hop hot songs charts. Okay. Sometimes on this show we talk about the Billboard charts, that could mean a lot of different things. Yes, but specifically, this is one of the top charts.

Like if you go to billboard.com and you look at the top charts. Yeah. One of them is the R&B slash hip hop hot charts. Okay. Now, Billboard does break out rap and R&B as subcategories. Huh. But it's the combined chart, which is predominantly featured. And it also confirms my confusion about Chances' music.

It literally bridges categories within a combined category. Okay, yeah. Ooh, my brain is starting to hurt. Instigated by Chances the Big Day, I found myself questioning, what does R&B specifically even mean today? Where does it divide from hip hop and does it have a sound? Is it its own genre? Yeah.

But before we can go there, I needed to catch myself up on how this term has changed over the years. Okay, cool. So R&B has a complicated history that we're not going to be able to cover exhaustively in one episode. It's been intertwined with the complexities of American race and identity since its birth in the dawn of the civil rights era. Yeah. What I want to focus on today was simply how the Billboard has changed the label and methodology of counting R&B over the years to see how it may have led to my confusion. And we'll see that it's changed a lot decade by decade. Interesting.

So the title of the Billboard R&B charts hasn't necessarily changed, but what R&B represents has. Don't get ahead of me. Okay, okay. Now, I had known that originally in the late 40s, R&B was originally known as the Harlem Hip Great. That's what it was called, the Billboard. And then it was changed to race records before Billboard updated the title to Rhythm and Blues. But what I didn't know is where it went from there. So I got on the phone with Billboard to help understand how this term has evolved.

Hi, I'm Trevor Anderson. I am the R&B and hip-hop chart manager here at Billboard. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Billboard toyed with different chart titles before finally harmonizing around a single name. There have been rhythm and blues kind of isolated before, but it really solidified down to R&B for the longest time in about 1956. One of the best artists to give us a taste of the R&B sound

of the mid and late 50s, I think, is Sam Cuck. His song, You Send Me, spent six weeks at... number one in 1957. Darling, you send me. I know, darling, I wish you do. Man, that track holds up. Very well.

So well. Zooming to the 50s, the R&B sound seems defined by, you know, acoustic instruments, soulful, gospel-inflected vocals. I think you'll hear,

not maybe with this song in particular, but a lot of song forms derive from the 12-bar blues form. This is also the seeds of rock and roll, which is developing kind of concurrently. So, yeah, a very specific sound in the 1950s for R&B. This slow tempo blues inspired in what I would say, romantic vocal became the sound of R&B. But while this became a prominent sound of the era, R&B as a genre actually didn't last on the billboard. In fact, from 1963 to 1965, the billboard stopped reporting the R&B charts because

pop music and R&B basically fused and were synonymous with each other. Ah. And specifically, a lot of white artists started to mimic the sound. Take your troubles to the chap. Get down on your knees and pray. That's Elvis's Crying in the Chapel from 1965. It was the number nine song of the year. Yeah.

So this is a track from that period when the pop and R&B charts were sort of merged. There was no differentiation between them. Yeah, that's interesting because it does feel like it's borrowing elements from both styles. If you go back to Sam Cook, take your troubles to the chat. We still have, like, rhythmically that 6-8-da-da-da-da-da-da feel. We still have those acoustic instruments, the kind of soulful vocal. But then there's also these elements that seem more drawn from pop.

Like, it's got this, it's kind of a little square. it's not as swung, the vocals like land in all the right places a little bit more. Maybe it's playing it safe in some ways. Yeah. Well, you know, this is just one of countless examples throughout history of pop music subsuming black culture. And chart theorists speculate that Billboard adjusted their R&B methodology as a corrective to specifically highlight music created by black artists and listened to by black audiences. They did this by counting R&B specific radio forms.

mats and black owned retailers as a part of the charts. And they made this adjustment in 1965, and R&B was reintroduced by the billboard as the hot rhythm and blues singles. However, the sound of black music changed, and the label didn't fit for long. Here's Trevor again. It was that until about the late 1960s. Then the term soul took over from R&B, and so the main billboard chart that today reflects R&B and hip hop at that time

became the soul singles chart. The Billboard category, which had once been driven by blues music and then the romantic sounds of artists like Sam Cook, then becomes the soul charts to broaden the kind of music that can end up in that category, including

funk hits like the 1969 song, I can't get next to you by The Temptations. God, I love the temptations. Also remember when vocal groups actually used to sound different. Yeah. As in like each, you could like recognize each member and, you know, and the temptations.

We've got at this point, I think lead singer Dennis Edwards with that rough, gravely lead voice. Melvin Franklin was holding down the low end. You have Eddie Kendrix taking that high falsetto. And then of course, Otis Williams and Paul Williams kind of bringing in those like subtle tenor tones in the back. background. Sorry, what were we talking about? I just love there also the introduction of the funk guitar, an entirely new way of playing the guitar like basically a drum. It's acting as this real rhythm instrument.

So this would, so it's just to check in this would have appeared on the soul charts in 1969. Yeah, and soul records ruled the 70s. But again, the sound of black music constantly evolving throughout the decade sort of unsettles this category. Trevor said that by the end of the decade, it was felt that the term soul did not reflect what Black America was listening to. Yeah, in 1982, there's a decision and it goes from Soul singles to Black singles. The terms R&B and Soul, they really didn't accurately, totally encapsure the kind of music that African Americans in particular were listening to and buying. You know, really it became a mix of disco and pop and rock and gospel and

jazz. I mean, it really was just the music that black Americans were consuming and taking part in. I feel like M2 May's juicy fruit recorded in 1982 and released in 83 really highlights some of these musical changes. That is not the temptations. Whoa. Did the temperature of this room just increased by 10? It's a bit toasty. I mean, I love listening to this. On one hand, it feels very new, as you said. We've got programmed drums. we have that funk guitar

becoming even a little sharper and harder. We've got, sounds like synthesizers are in the mix too. And yet there's also, I might say there is some continuity going all the way back to Sam Cook even at this point. We've slowed down.

Yeah, and those vocals are so like tender and romantic. Interesting. Okay. And this song is, for me, it's definitely a far cry from the earliest sort of blues era race records. And it sounds certainly different than the soul records

that happening in the 70s. The track also foreshadows a significant shift in genre. We know the notorious BIG, of course, uses this song as the main sample for his hit, Juicy, in the 90s. Something pepher and heavy D up in the limousine hanging pictures on my wall. Every Saturday, rap attack, Mr. Magic Molly Mall.

The 90s were a period of critical change in the Billboard's methodology. Just as music is changing, so is the way that they're counting it. which once again affects the sound and the categorization of R&B, which Trevor attributes to changes in technology. Neel to music comes in and sound scan and these technologies are better able to accurately identify from a range of genres, the specific types of radio airplay that are coming through.

So there's a lot more diversity in radio stations and types of radio stations. So for people who like, you know, instead of listening to sort of a one black station, now there's a lane for a gospel station. Now there's a lane for an adult R&B station. Now there's a lane for a jazz station. So with that, you know, those genres are able to get their own charts on Billboard in a way that they really hadn't had before. And so as part of that, then R&B sort of became, once again, that predominant genre for that experience. And so there wasn't really a need to categorize and lump them all together as black singles anymore. go back to being R&B.

From the 60s through the 80s, the terms R&B, then Seoul, then black singles were used as umbrella categories to communicate what black artists were making on black audiences were listening to. But then in the 1990s, closer tracking of listening behavior results in a breakup of these umbrella categories, fracturing into smaller subgenres. Once again, R&B gets its own chart, and the genre performs remarkably well. And the 90s in particular, you know, I think people think of that really is one of the great R&B heydays just because if you look on the Hot 100, for example, which, you know, is considered the main pop chart,

a lot of R&B records are taking over the airways at that time. So, you know, distillation gets back down in the 90s in particular to civic R&B. So it seems R&B had started as a genre, opens up to be inclusive of all kinds of music. Yeah. And is now sort of isolating again into a specific genre. This is the era of Tony Braxton. Right. Janet Jackson.

Uh-huh. And boys to men. Definitely. Ooh. Damn. Those harmonies are on point. Also, props to that sign. I don't know if I've clocked this before.

You know, the first time he says, I'll make love to you like you want me to. But then the second time, he says, I'll make love to you when you want me to. And it's like, okay, I like that second version. There's a little more consent implied. As Trevor says, there seems to be more genre coherence and a specific R&B sound. Okay, so now this is so interesting because I'm like listening to these songs through this historical, you know, R&B continuum now. And the 90s as representing sort of this second renaissance, I guess, of R&B. It really makes sense to me.

And once again, if we take Sam Cook as like the origin point to trace all this back to in some ways, I mean, whether that's accurate or not, I see a lot of commonality between this and a track like, you send me. Again, it's got this slow tempo. It's got these soaring, romantic vocals with a lot of ad-living and space for improv. It's got kind of lush chords, acoustic instruments, some at least. I mean, we've come a long way and yet maybe haven't gone far at all. As much as we're coming back to a sound in a sort of cohering genre.

Yeah. And as much as this is the era, the heyday for R&B artists, it's also the period that hip hop starts to cross over. Yes. Lauren Hill, for example, comes along and she really kind of changes the game because, you know, miseducation of Lauren Hill. if you listen to that album, it's got a mix of rap and it's got a mix of R&B, it's got a mix of old school influences, Lord performs. She both raps and sings.

You know, that kind of forces really the industry and Billboard is part of that to reevaluate. It can calculate what she's doing as both an R&B artist. You know, someone who's actually singing and performing that way, but also as a hip-hop artist because she has just that sound and that flavor and that culture. So that's what makes that change happen to make an R&B slap. hip hop where it is today. In 1999, the R&B and hip hop charts merge to catch up to where the music and the audience is at. We can hear this crossover between hip hop and R&B in songs like Diddy and Faith Evans,

I'll be missing you. It's hard to conceal. Can't imagine all the pain I feel. Give anything to hit half your breath. I know you're still living in life after death. And Nelly and Kelly Rowland's dilemma. And at this point, the lines of genre have been to be, she said. You don't know what you mean to me.

And at this point, the lines of genre have been pretty thoroughly blurred. Audiences are now listening to all kinds of genres. And the genres are influencing each other, which is no surprise given that we're now in the era of digital downloads and more ubiquitous music consumption. But it's not just listener behavior driving these crossovers. It's also the charts. Remember when in 1965, Billboard changed its rules to specifically highlight music being created by black artists and listened to by a black audience. Yeah.

How could I forget? Well, according to Trevor, that all changed in 2012 when Billboard harmonized its methods to account for streaming across all of its charts. Now, in 2012, the change is made to directly reflect the Hot 100. So that also includes any of the pop audience airplay that comes across many songs that have crossover appeal because before that crossover appeal wasn't reflected on the RB Hip Hop chart. So now that it mirrors Hot 100, it opens up that pop radio play and all those retail sales from iTunes or any retailer at that point. So now it reflects the Hot 100. And even today still, if you go down the Hot 100 and you go down the Hot R&B hip hop songs chart, you'll see that the order that the songs appear on Hot 100. is the same order as they'd appear

on the hot R&B hip-hop songs chart or the hot rap songs chart or the hot R&B songs chart. So just to clarify, Billboard used to have different methodologies of counting for each of its different charts and then in 2012 decides to standardize

to the Hot 100 method because, you know, frankly, listener behavior has changed. Streaming is really the main way of listening. In-store purchases less important and radio and all of it's in there. They have one method now.

And even though there are subcategories for rap and R&B, they're really just subsets of the Hot 100 method, which is to say that all the charts are counted in the same methodology now. This new methodology has put Billboard in the difficult position of designating what falls and what genre, which has created no shortage of controversy. I can imagine. Right? Sometimes you don't want to be either the person that has to, to pick and choose.

Yeah, or ever, but go ahead. Yeah. We previously covered the country hip-hop, old town road debacle, but it's not the only one. Billboard previously got in hot water in 2014 when Uptown Funk, and obviously funk song, was not given the R&B designation. They instead called it a pop hit that crossed over to R&B radio. And there have been other unintended consequences of this new methodology as well, especially in terms of representation. Unfortunately, we're seeing some of the same dynamics of the early 1960s with some homogenization happening within the charts. According to Chris Malanfi at Slate in 2013,

44 out of 52 weeks, the hot R&B hip-hop chart, historically black chart, was taught by white artists, mostly McElmore and Ryan Lewis and Robin Thick. Interesting. So on one hand, I think Billboard has over the years responded to changes in R&B music, but it's also how to force in shaping the sound by choosing what those categories are, or now selecting what genre a song fits in, which I would argue has contributed to some audience confusion, especially on my part. Nonetheless, for a lot of listeners, as well as artists, R&B is still an essential label separate from the combined R&B hip-hop chart.

So I thought it would be important that we talk with someone who could speak on the subject with authority, someone who Rolling Stone called one of today's most important R&B producers. My name is Oak Felder. I'm 6.5 and I'm very friendly. This is true. That is all true. Oak is a bit of a super producer and has worked with pop acts like Britney Spears,

Alessi Akara, and Demi Lovato. But more importantly, he's really sculpted the sound of many R&B records for artists like Usher, Tony Braxton, Miguel, and Kalani. Yeah. When we return, we'll join Oak in his studio so I can finally get a handle on the sound of R&B today. Excellent. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster?

Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Do not sugarcoat something for me. No, no.

We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly Democratic cities for ice raids and deportations.

Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security? period. I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want order at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week

on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. How should we conceptualize the broad category of R&B in 2019? R&B, I think, exists in two different forms right now. R&B exists as a genre, and R&B also exists as an influence. And I think that there's a difference. As an influence, there are certain things that are brought to other styles of music that have traditionally been a part of the R&B genre. And that gets sort of influxed into what's happening with rap music

what's happening with pop music and all these other things. R&B is a genre right now, however, to me is a very specific of what it is. It's not all exactly the same, but it is sort of a new thing. From a genre standpoint, it feels very different than at any other point in history. It's sort of this amalgamation of borrowed concepts from the past, like from the 60s, and these sort of rhythmic concepts from today, the newer sort of contemporary rhythmic concepts and it kind of fused. That's what the modern genre of R&B is right now. As it relates to R&B being an influence,

it's literally all the greatest hits of R&B over the last 70 years or 60 years have all been kind of thrown into every genre of music. So that's how I would define it. What are some of the essential musical components that people are hearing when we associate R&B and contemporary music? The first thing that comes to my mind,

mind is court selection. R&B chords have a lot of character to them. Like you're never going to play a straight C major or C minor. You're not playing a three-finger chord in R&B, unless you do it on accident. Like it's always going to be something with like a lot, like an extra added, this with an A flat on top and a, you know, a minor seventh. Like it's got to be really, really. So that, I think the relationship of the melody to the chord, my perception of pop music, is that it's a very straightforward core progression that doesn't move a whole lot, and then you have a melody that's very dynamic.

R&B is the opposite. You have a melody that's sort of very straightforward and almost rhythmic, and a chord progression that's very dynamic, so that you create the tension in the same way, except in pop, one thing is moving, and in R&B, the other thing is moving. The other thing that I would identify R&B with

is sonic selection. If I pull up a whirlwind, like an old school whirlie, and put a reverb and a filter on it and start playing some cool chords. That's going to be an R&B track, especially if I pull up some hard-ass drums. Firstly, chords, secondly sound selection, I think.

I pay a lot of attention to the nuance of genre, and I'm seeing R&B transition from being trap-oriented to just being R&B. I can go back to 2015 and pull up three, four productions, including ones that I did. One example is distraction by Kaylani. There's 808 in that record.

There's trap hats in that record. There's like these cool, like bendy synths in that record. And that sort of gets its influences from trap music because trap, you know, at that point was starting to explode and it's still big today. But R&B at this point is starting to sort of leave all that to the side. And so today, you know, I'll pull up some cool chords.

My drums will still be hard. They won't necessarily be trap drums, which is a different thing. They might keep the trap patterns, and we might stay in that same tempo. I might set my daughter 147 beats per minute and play everything in halftime. But I'm not using an 808 kick an 808 snare anymore.

And if I'm using the 808 high hat, I'm pitching it down. You know what I mean? I'm kind of making it feel a little bit more lo-fi. And that, I think, is what is starting to define R&B right now is not what it is exactly, but what it's not. And it's not trap. So let's take that out of it.

And it's not old school R&B. So let's get rid of all that shit, too. Like, just let's distill it to what it is. To sort of help our listeners think about that, I wanted to play for them, Kalani's distraction, which you produced. In the bridge, it feels like you're playing to a very particular 90s R&B sound.

What's evoking that? How is that brought to life? Okay. So there's a story behind that. So the singer from SWV, the lead singer of SWV is a girl named Coco. And I think she's from, she's somewhere up east.

Like, I'm not exactly sure where. My guess would be like D.C., New York area, potentially. But for whatever reason, there are people in that area that say you in a very specific way. And she has a very distinctive word of singing the word you. She tends to, like, put the vowel at the back of her throat. So it's like you, like it's very, and the vibrato is very fast. Like, Coco's like you is just the way she pronounces it.

And so if you listen to all the 90s like SWV records, whenever she says that word, she sounds like that. Here's the funny thing. SWV sort of helped shape R&B and how it sounded in the 90s. So a lot of other singers started picking up that enunciation on that word and on that vowel. So 90s R&B, when you listen to it, a lot of other singers, you start picking up that enunciation on that vowel. 90s R&B when you listen to it, a lot of other singers are singing it and pronouncing it the same way. So this is a conversation that Kalani had. She pays a lot of attention to that kind of shit too.

So she's sitting there having a conversation about that. And she's like, we should just do a pre-chorus where I'm saying you in that way. So when you listen to the pre, she says, I need you. So then that sort of inspired us to make that pre-chorus feel like it could have been an SWVV pre-chorus. So even the backgrounds of that song are modeled after. There's a song called, I get so weak in the need. There's a background arrangement in that record that doesn't really follow the lyric of the lead. It sort of supports it with extra lyrics.

So we did that in the pre-chorus for distraction. And that sort of inspired me to make that whole thing feel like an homage to the 90s. I need you. That's where that sonic came from. The bridge is an extension of that. The sound selection is the... Yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's an old-school DX-7.

And so you're getting like this really belly sort of cool tone happening. And it's a very baby-faced 1990s thing. You know what I'm saying? So shout out to Brian Alexander Morgan, by the way. He's the producer of a lot of that SWV stuff. It's incredible guy. We go from the bridge or it happens in the pre-chorus as well. You get this very 90s R&B thing.

You think you're in one world, and then you get this trap, wind down, snare thing. Yeah, hell yeah, hell yeah, definitely. And then what world are we in? At that point, we are going back to the trap-inspired R&B. You know what's funny? I was listening to you guys' podcast on Debbie Lovato, sorry and not sorry. I'm glad you heard it. One of you mentioned something that really made me laugh, man.

You guys said that that fill right there sounded like the whole track was sort of just falling apart. I thought that was pretty cool. It's actually a good example of sort of the energy we want to create. Sort of a surprise moment where you think everything is sort of falling apart. And then surprise. You know what I mean? You get slapped in the face with like this trap 808 that happens right on the one. So it's there for that reason.

It's also there to sort of bring you to cross you from one genre to another within the song. Without it sort of abruptly happening. Like at one point you're listening to 90s R&B. And at the very next moment, you're listening to like a trap R&B. And so this fill that happens is a transition between those two spaces. And, you know, once we hit the hook, yeah, we're definitely doing trap R&B at that point. When we were listening to distraction at the car over here, we were like,

it feels like you were just saying like this cool combination of 90s R&B and contemporary trap music. Like, is the 90s a big reference point when you're producing tracks? Like, is that maybe the prime time? of R&B? No, I would definitely not say that. It is the prime time of R&B. I think R&B has not had a proper golden age yet. I think it's had moments where it shined.

I think that the 90s influence from that record, picking that influence and picking that vibe had less to do with the fact that we were doing R&B music and more to do with the fact that the artist I was working with at the time was inspired by that. You know, I'm a record producer, and one of our jobs is to be the mirror for the artist. So, you know, that's one thing I always say,

being a producer is a service industry. So when the artist walks in and says, I'm really inspired by R&B music from the 90s, you go. All right. Which is why one of the biggest things I say as a producer is to know and be informed of the nuances of all those different genres. Because you never know who's going to walk through the door

and say, oh, man, let's do some 60s-era funk. Or let's do some 70s-era funk. There's a difference. So it's like, it's good to know those nuances as a producer. When she walked through the door and she said, I'm inspired by 90s R&B, I knew exactly what the sound set was. You know what I mean? I knew exactly what to pick from.

And I knew what modern elements to still include so that we're just not making a throwback record. Yeah. This is interesting because I think part of my age and what I was listening to, also the sort of unique sonic characteristics of music that was made in the late 1990s, literally just because of the way

that records were produced, there's like a very particular sound that I zoom in on. And I think for a long time I had felt that like, you know, a Mariah Carey kind of sound was like, oh, that's R&B, but it's much broader than that.

Mariah, I think when she first came out, I don't necessarily, I mean, she was an R&B artist, but she sort of represented the, sort of the more rhythmic, less urban, Less Irving is the wrong way to put that. You know, you had Jodice and then you had Mariah Carey.

You know, and they were out around the same time. You know, Jodicee was R&B, like a distilled form of pure R&B essence. Mariah, she implemented like a lot of pop elements into her music, but very soulful still. So I think what we're establishing here is that R&B is a broad category that encompasses a large history of black music and that it as a genre is a moving target. Is that accurate? That's very accurate. It's like at one point R&B was like this star and it expanded and expanded and expanded and expanded.

And now it's sort of this nebula of influence that every genre is pulling from. But there's this new smaller star that's still defining itself right now as a genre. And I don't think we'll see what it will eventually become until maybe two or three, years from now. I think in two or three years we'll know, oh, this is definitively R&B, but right now you still have these huge variances, like you got your Daniel Caesar's, and then you got your

jacquises. And they're new artists in the genre, and they're both R&B artists, and they're both male R&B artists, but they're very, very different. You know what I mean? We've got to go into this. What are you hearing that is developing, and is it making its way into your music? It is definitely making its way into the music

that I make. There's a record that Her has, called Hard Place. It's an amazing song and it's literally just a live drum break and a guitar and a bass and her voice. The drums are mixed hard so it's like you're not listening to something that's like just a soft sort of drum break happening through it. Like it's still something you can thump but it's so straightforward and it borrows from a lot of the folkier sort of R&B elements from the past and this is exactly what I'm talking about. You have your harder drum elements but then you have this sort of borrowing from throwback.

And I think that's what's happening with a lot of R&B right now. Whereas even five, six years ago, the production elements of R&B and the vibes from R&B tended to be more about interesting, quirky, clever sonics. Let's see if we can make this 808 bend up into the keyboard that then bends back down into the 808. And I'm sitting there doing cross-phase between instruments, and I've done that before.

I think today the simplicity of it, And that's what R&B is sort of distilling itself down to as a simpler form, is making its way into the music that I make. The best example is this. I like to eat, right? Sushi. Sushi is so simple. It's literally, and I'm talking about sushi.

I'm not talking about, like, you know, party sushi where, you know, where it's like, you know, sauces and creams, row and all this. I'm talking about just rice and fish. And that's all it is. And it's very simple. And on its surface, it looks like a very simple thing. but the complexity that goes into these two simple ingredients. The process, do you know how they make sushi rice?

It's a lot. It's the same process with picking the fish. All these complex ideas get distilled down to this one ingredient and added to another ingredient. And it looks and feels simple. But you know the difference between a good sushi spot and a bad sushi spot. R&B is the same way. And if it's done right, it sounds so.

simple, but it's profound. And I think that hard place record is a good example of that. Focus is another good example of that. That's another her record called Focus, which is literally just kick, snare, an arpeggiated harp, and I think an 808, and there's a drum fill. There's like a drum roll fill that happens every eight bars, every 16 bars. And that's it. That's the whole production. There's not, I don't even think there's any background vocals in that record. It's just her as a lead, which is what a lot of R&B records are doing right now anyway. It's like a lead. Like if you listen to distraction, it's a Well, that was more like three, four years ago. But listen to distraction, it's like there's a stack on a chorus and harmonies everywhere in the hook. Today I listen to R&B records and their single lead vocals. So yeah, I think what's happening as R&B is distilling itself down to figure out what it is at a basic level.

Once it establishes itself, gets a foothold, becomes like a mainstream form because R&B to me is a brand new form right now. R&B as a genre is brand spanking new. Like I said, the old. old R&B genre has diffused into, it's not a genre anymore. It's, people are inspired by it. People are influenced by it.

But it's not a genre anymore. It's just, it's like jazz is. Jazz is like this diffused form. And even though it still exists as a genre, people do perform jazz records. Now you'll have somebody use a jazz chord progression in a pop song, for instance. So it's an influence now more than it is an actual genre. R&B is that right now. The old school form of R&B is that right now.

But this, what we have here today, is a brand new form. And it's exciting, man. It excites me a lot. Like, I feel lucky to be alive in a time when a new genre of music is being shaped. Is there a recent production of yours that highlights some of those changes you're talking about? Like, we're listening to distraction. We hear those crunchy R&B chords you were talking about. We hear that specific sonic selection of, like, a DX7 synthesizer.

But then you were saying maybe the trap drums that you hear on distraction would sound different today. Like, is there a, yeah, is there a recent record you've done that might show that evolution? So there's actually a record on that same project that showcases the beginning of that evolution for me. It's one of my, I have three songs that are my favorite songs that I've ever produced. And this is one of them. It's a song called Everything is Yours. It is very simple. I'm not even playing a full chord progression.

I'm literally paying the root note and the fifth through the whole record. The power cord. Basically. But you're still getting the gist of the chord. So there's that sound, there's an 808, there's a kick, there's a snare, and there are trap drums in there, but they're pitched all the way down. Like they don't sound like trap drums. And it feels something that's a little more akin to something that would have done today

from a production standpoint, because at the time time, I remember thinking, how do we do this without doing trap? Like, how do we do this and make it feel forward, sort of forward leaning? This is an arrogant statement, and I know a lot of producers are going to think I'm, like, feeling myself by saying this, but I feel like that production is something that today would still feel very forward-leaning. This is a track that we did, like, three years ago. So I, and I'm proud of that fact, listen, that doesn't happen to be very often.

So I'm very proud of that fact. That production is very simple. it's a lead-driven song which at the time you had that but not that often and then my 808 is like rolling around in the hook which at that time wasn't really

a thing like you had pitched 808s but they weren't really there wasn't like a port of mental 808 thing sort of happening in R&B music especially you might have had it in like like EDM trap but you didn't have it in R&B really I'm using the 808 more like a

like a portamento like a low end portamento instrument. Portamento being... I'm sorry, legato is really what I mean. Like, in other words, my portamento is pulled all the way up. Almost acting as like an upright bass being bowed and sort of sliding around.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's what it feels like. Portamento is Italian for sliding around. Yeah, and so this 808 is... I just made that up. Actually, I don't know if that's true. Jeez, that sounds right. You know what? I'm going to tell people that and act like I know what I'm talking about. Portamento actually

means sliding around. We're innovating on language right here. Beautiful. One of the albums that really, I think, caused this tizzy of mine was the new Chance record. He does this song with John Legend as the opening piece. Chance is one of these artists where he's a rapper. He's doing R.B.

He's doing gospel. He's doing soul. He's kind of like all over the place. How can we conceptualize this record? I mean, I'm inspired by Chance, man. I really am. He's a guy that's not afraid to take genres and really mix them. He's got this.

record problems that, you know, it's like he just takes gospel and trap and throws them together. Chance is a master at that. And I think he's good at subverting expectations too, which is what I imagine he did on the, or what intended to do and succeeded in doing on the John Legend track. So perhaps we should think about this more in your first categorization of R&B, which is part of like the larger history rather than this emerging genre that you're targeting. Well, here's the thing. Chance to me is not an R&B artist. Chance is a hip-hop artist, and there's a difference. I think that Chance, like a lot of hip-hop, is being influenced by this larger influence R&B, sort of the nebula cloud of R&B.

But if you asked him if he was an R&B artist, he probably would say he doesn't define himself as any specific genre. But to me, Chance is a hip-hop artist, and he's that. And the good thing about hip-hop now is that it is so. diverse and there are so many options and so many things to grab and hold things to do. So I love that about chance, but I wouldn't necessarily consider him an R&B artist per se. Like to me, that genre is more for people like Kalani or Siza or Summer Walker or Khalid. Like those artists to me are R&B artists. It's a little different.

One of the things that strikes me about talking with you is that I wonder if there's a difference between being a producer today and perhaps then special. You're like, this is what I do. I specialize in this one thing, this one, this R&B sound, and I've, like, mastered this. But talking with you today, it's like, whoa, as a producer today, you need to not only have this encyclopedic knowledge of music history where an artist can come in and say, I want to do 70s funk, not 60s funk. And you're like, okay, I got that. And you have to be at the same time aware of everything that's happening in 2019 with music so you can, like, do all this genre of mashing. That seems like you have to do a lot of homework, I imagine, to stay on top of all this. To be honest with you, I don't necessarily consider it homework.

It's one of the reasons why I became a record producer is because I just love listening to music. I listen to all of it. I listen to a lot of music growing up. I listen to a lot of music now. I go home and I listen to music. It makes my wife sick. You know what I mean? I listen to music quite a bit.

So this is going to sound arrogant. but I think I have a gift for identifying influences and genres. I think I can hear a production and say, oh, yeah, they got that from blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, I know where they got that from. Oh, okay, that piece feels like it came from such. Oh, yeah, that's a Billy Holiday reference. You know what I mean?

Like, I pay attention to all those different pieces. And so when new music comes out, I'm constantly listening to see two things. how those genres from the past sort of coalesced into that song, that production. But seeing the direction of that also gives me a way to predict where it's going to go in the future.

You know what I mean? It's like watching the road behind you and sort of guessing which way it's going. You know what I mean? I think that helps you as a producer. One question I get asked a lot in interviews is what... How do they say it?

What advice would you give producers coming up, right? I get that question a lot. The answer to that question is always, know your history, know the history of your music, know all the references, you know, know what the difference is

between a Brian May guitar tone or now Rogers guitar tone. Know what guitars they played. This has been absolutely fabulous. Thank you for joining us. Really appreciate it. Thank you, man. I really appreciate it.

Okay, so here's what I'm thinking. I'm right to be confused by Chance's record. Yes. Not only has R&B always been a moving target, but according to Oak, it's an essential influence to much of today's pop music. And as a genre, it's still changing. Maybe Chance's record doesn't fit into the new subgenre. Yeah.

But it seems to be influence, undoubtedly, by the larger category. Right. I mean, this is like something that came up when we discussed Lizzo's recent album as well. It's like, where do you slot some of content? February music. I mean, certainly with a track like Hot Shower that maybe like we said belongs in hip hop. But then there are other tracks on this chance album that it's like, where would these go? You use this phrase with Lizzo, like the end of genre. And if we accept that we might be getting to that point, the billboard charts and our conceptions of like what is pop versus hip hop

versus R&B will get increasingly porous, right? Certainly. What we've seen is that all of these things are moving and trying to catch up with each other, right? Listener behavior is changing. What audiences enjoy is also changing. Right. The music is changing. And Billboard and industry groups have to keep up and try to figure out what do we call

this thing so that we can figure out how to market it and highlight it. Yeah. And so everything is constantly in this flux and this terminology ends up feeling. a lot looser. Right. And yet at the same time, what I love about talking to Oak is how you get the sense that he is a master of genre. Yeah.

Or what we might call like historical genre or something. And he uses that almost assassin-like ability to like instantly capture and communicate a sense of genre in order to completely mess with your sense of genre. Yeah. So it's, yeah, I don't know. This has been very illuminating. I'm not sure that I'm any further along and understanding any particular given sound because I don't have Oakes' encyclopedic knowledge of play me an R&B thing from 1963.

Yeah. But I do feel validated in my confusion and feel excited to listen. Yeah. Embrace the confusion. This episode of Switched on Pop was produced by Bridget Armstrong and me, Charlie Harding. Megan Lubin is our production fellow. Brenda McFarlane mixes, edits, and masters the show. Sarah Terry is our community manager. Nishak Kerwah and Liz Nelson are our executive producers.

We're a production of the Vox Media Podcast Network. You can find more episodes at switchedonpop.com or anywhere you get podcasts. Apple Podcast app, Spotify, Radio Public, Iheart Radio. We're on there. I also want to shout out Chris Malanfie's article. If you want to go deeper into the world of the history of R&B on the Billboard charts, you'll want to read his piece, I know you got Soul, the trouble with Billboard's R&B hip-hop chart. I'll post it in our show notes.

Chris is The Chart Whisper. Oh, no doubt. Hit us up on social media at Switched on Pop. We love getting your recommendations. We are on Twitter, on Instagram, and Switch. We'll be back again in another week, and until then. Thanks for listening.