The World Is My Block

It's going to be her single Stateside but it's not the single they're leading with over here, it's one called Trenchcoat & Shades & I got that wrong in the interview, that was a tiddle bit awkward, but nonetheless.

Got me thinking though; with R&B and other black music (even dancehall) going distinctly mainstream, and dance music dominating the charts, there seems to be a trend of business savvy hip-hop & R&B musicians/industry entrepreneurs choosing to sign artists geared towards pop audiences rather than urban to their imprints, i.e., Akon, with Lady Gaga, Lil Wayne with Kevin Rudolf, now Ne-Yo with Jadyn... In fact, the current popular music formula seems to be marketing pop artists/songs with an "urban edge" - adding a rapper to a dance track or getting a traditionally hip-hop producer to produce a pop track etc and you hear R&B singers increasingly talking about wanting a "euro-pop" feel on their music.

It's a way of going where the money is as it's likely to secure success - radio AND club friendly, and lyrics generally based around something frivolous like partying (so if a rapper's on the track, they don't have to worry about censorship of lyrics) etc, but with everyone doing it, there's not much distinction between a so-called R&B artist, a pop artist, a dance artist, a rapper (you know it's deep when you can't tell the difference between a popstar and a rapper). This is particularly noticable with UK underground artists emerging through, something I mentioned in an earlier post.

I'm not hating on it at all though; in fact, because of this trend, more and more pop tunes are inching their way onto my MP3 player and in my regular rotation and people who - for example - wouldn't touch hip hop with a bargepole know one of the scene's best rising stars, Kid Cudi, through a Crookers remix - and R&B consumers will actually pay attention to Jadyn Maria knowing she's been co-signed and endorsed by the scene's premiere gentleman, Ne-Yo.

ANYWAYS...Enough gassing, lock into SATURDAY SPARKLE between 2-4pm on Saturday at BANG Radio 103.6 to catch the interview.