Rhythm and Blues: Intimacy and Transcendence in the Thick of Life

Rhythm and Blues

Intimacy and Transcendence
in the Thick of Life

Thinking about R&B with help from NPR

NPR's Ten Best R&B Albums of 2017

There is a spirit of creative transformation at work in the world. It is inside each person and also present throughout the natural world. Process theologians call it God’s Breathing. Many people are open to this spirit without thinking of it as God. It is what motivates a person to seek intimacy with others, to affirm herself, and to reinvent herself, moment by moment. And it is what empowers a person to make a way out of no way and to be strong in the midst of difficulties. Transcendence in the thick of life is the activity of being open to this spirit. It is the religious side of R&B. Openness to this spirit does not make a person morally perfect. He or she may have many failings. Still, she knows God's breathing, and she hears it in R&B. This is why she loves it. It tells her story. (Jay McDaniel)

Ann Powers of NPR
on the Heart of Soul Music

"This the heart of soul music: transcendence intertwined with an unflagging sense of being in the thick of life, the sound of ordinary people heroically getting by. To live is to face the fight. To not want to fight is to live. Fly on."
-- Ann Powers, NPR

Jason King of NPR
on What Rhythm and Blues Does

"What links R&B across all that space and time is its emphasis on dance, sex and romance. At its best, R&B remains a morally and spiritually resonant music about love and intimacy, about carnal pleasure, about unrequited dreams, about girls knocking out boys in outstanding ways. It's about being overjoyed and underpaid and living for the weekend and turning your house into a home. It's the music of picket lines and picket signs, of sin and salvation, of hustles, twists and Soul Trains. It's the soundtrack of cities being burned by riots, of communities struggling to be free, of people darker than blue saying it loud and proud to be right on and free. It's the music of corner bars and shabeens and dancehalls and supermarkets and bathhouses and weddings and barbecues and family reunions. It's happy feelings and silent tears, hot grits and raining men, tempestuous telephone calls and profound pillow talk. It's feel-deep music, vibration and frequency meant to resonate in the marrow of your bones and the cells of your blood." -- Jason King, NPR, I'll Take You There: R&B from NPR Music

Ann Powers of NPR
on Sampha's Process

"If black popular music, from blues to funk to hip-hop soul, has long illuminated the intricacies of love and sex, expressions of black interior life beyond the erotic have been sadly limited within the racist music industry. Nina Simone's rage in songs like "Four Women" and Marvin Gaye's fearless exploration of inner troubles on What's Going On offer templates that only a few gifted risk-takers have attempted to fulfill. Sampha Sisay, the London-based singer-songwriter and master of organic electronics whose collaborations with Kanye West, Beyoncé and Frank Ocean have been stretching boundaries for a while, takes a crucial step in this direction on his debut album, Process.

It's an understated yet deeply powerful work exploring grief, anxiety, self-sustenance and, yes, desire, as these sometimes complementary, often conflicting emotions run up against each other within one ordinary life. "There's a fault in my structure," Sampha sings in his bumpy, moaning tenor on "Reverse Faults," one of the tender pauses that alternate on Process with more propulsive expressions of unrest. He's speaking geographically: His mind is the ground shifting beneath his feet as he confronts the death of his mother, his own sometimes fragile health and the everyday struggle to remain stable when every morning seems to deal another unexpected hand. Process is beautiful, sometimes harrowing, and ultimately hopeful: The very act of claiming himself pushes Sampha toward spaciousness and light, as does this album, a lucid dream leading to greater wakefulness. --Ann Powers, from NPR's Best 10 R and B Albums of 2017

Michael Carmichael of NPR
on Jhené Aiko's Trip

Sometimes the most important trip we take is the one inside ourselves. For Jhene Aiko, the autobiographical Trip follows her on a personal journey of self-discovery as she mourns the untimely death of her brother, Miyagi Chilombo. As a singer-songwriter who's always existed in a liminal space between radio R&B and traditional soul, her ethereal voice serves as a ghostly tour guide. She navigates the pain of loss over a soundtrack that keeps her afloat, metaphysically, Aiko tries to numb her hurt with everything from drugs to love. But the psychedelic escape she's seeking through songs like "LSD" and "Oblivion" give way to a higher "Frequency."...

"But Trip is about more than filling her heart's holes with new lust or quick highs. It's the confessional narrative of her grappling with the nature of desire as she awakens to her own power. She's a brave soul, both vulnerable and visionary, for taking us along for the ride. --Rodney Carmichael from NPR's Best 10 R and B Albums of 2017