Mark Anthony Neal

Critical Noir

Waiting for Keyshia

Posted 10/16/2007 at 3:06 PM | 2 comment/s

It goes without saying, that the "art" of R&B singing has long become a thing of the past. For all of the real talent that figures like Mary J. Blige, Beyonce, Fantasia possess, too often their performances are marked by banal exercises in melisma--technically defined as "changing the note (pitch) of a single syllable of text while it is being sung"--or more simply "vocal runs." Whereas a singer like the tragically obscured Linda Jones often employed melisma to dramatize critical moments in a lyric, many contemporary R&B singers simply have a case of the runs. The best performances of seminal R&B singer Luther Vandross, for example, highlighted his ability and willingness to leave his audiences anxious in wait for the deep runs that he was noted for. With a flair for the dramatic, Vandross often held out those runs until the end of a song (listen to "Wait for Love" or "Anyone Who had a Heart") as a form artistic denouement--a final pronouncement, if you will--of his singular vocal genius.

Such subtleties have largely been lost on many contemporary of R&B singers, who often break into frantic and fanatic riffs and runs midway through the first verse. This should not be surprising in a moment when so much contemporary R&B (and gospel for that matter) is being driven by producers whose skill set is largely related to making beats; many young singers are simply not getting the vocal direction that they deserve. The relationship between seasoned producers and young artists is often critical to those artists finding their "voice." Patti LaBelle, who is in many ways the singular embodiment of overwrought Soul singing, for example, didn't really find her voice--and her commercial niche--until she worked with legendary producers Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff on her 1983 solo recording I'm in Love Again. The session produced one of LaBelle's most memorable songs, "If Only You Knew". As veteran producers, who had worked with LaBelle a decade earlier on Laura Nyro's Gonna Take a Miracle, Gamble and Huff knew how to reign in LaBelle's voice to produce, what remains, her most nuanced performance.

The lack of experience by producers and vocalists often adds to the dissonance that resonates in the vocal quality of figures like Mary J. Blige or Faith Evans, who have become easy targets for a generation that is regularly thought to be out of tune--musically, morally, and politically--with the Soul singers of the 1960s and 1970s. But I'd like to suggest that such dissonance is not simply the product of a generation of singers who are out of pitch--and lacking the training to know so--but a response to the ways that post-Civil Rights generations hear the world. The nostalgic harmonies of the Civil Rights Generation (and their parents, many of whom are in the 80s) strikes discord in the lives of post-Civil Rights generations, notably Generation Hip-Hop, which have never had a tangible relationship to concepts such as "freedom" and "liberation" that some in the old guard presumed was transferable. Issues like the crack cocaine epidemic, the prison industrial complex, police brutality, voter disenfranchisement (largely based on race and class), depressed wages, lack of access to quality and affordable healthcare, misogyny, the failing infrastructure of public schooling, homophobia, as well as a populism of common sense (which by definition is stridently conservative and anti-intellectual), have often left post-Civil Rights generations grasping for straws, much the way Keyshia Cole--who I offer for your consideration--seems to frantically grasp for notes in virtually every song that she sings.

In the case of Cole, her singing style really is the embodiment of her on-going desire to hold together a life that has been fragmented by an absentee-father, a drug addicted and incarcerated mother, a difficult stint in foster care and her years as a runaway. Cole's debut recording The Way It Is (2005) provides some context for her near-tragic back-story, which became the basis of a reality show which captures Cole's attempts to find some closure to her relationship with her mother and the hard-scrabble Oakland community that reared her. And though none of Cole's songs, many of which she co-wrote, speak directly to the struggles of her childhood and teenage years, those difficulties are implicit in lyrics like "I used to think that I wasn't fine enough/And I used to think that I wasn't wild enough" (from "Love") which powerfully attest to Cole's desire to be loved--by any somebody--and the desire to matter in society that has shown little love for young, poor, and homeless black girls.

"Love" from Cole's debut perhaps captures the best example of why she is important. Though Cole is not technically proficient--think how many pretty voices inspire little in their performance--so much of her value is the way she conveys the very essence of her misery in every syllable. Much of the drama in "Love" pivots on Cole's utterances of the words "found/find" throughout the song's chorus ("Love, never knew what I was missing, but I knew once we start kissing I fououououounnd, love"). In the context of the song, found is the virtual space where Cole finds some emotional and psychic grounding. But as the tortured nature of the performance suggest, this space offers little solace--if Cole relaxes one bit, the performance literally falls flat--as Cole is symbolically in constant turmoil with the melodic terrain that she is largely responsible for creating.

Unfortunately there is little of this drama found on Cole's new release Just Like You. In an industry that only wants its R&B vixens pretty and sexy (and Cole is no doubt both), there's little interest in having those women give voice to the ragged complexities of their own lives--especially a live as tragic as Cole's has been thus far. There's a look in Cole's eyes in some of the publicity photos that adorn her new disc that suggest that she is in fact somewhere else. The hope is that with maturity and the ability to surround herself with musicians and producers who'll let her be, she'll be able to finally get to that "somewhere else" and the make the great music she is so clearly destined to make. I for one think that it will be worth the wait.

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