Reading about music is almost as important to me as listening to it. The best music writing offers new perspectives on music I already appreciate and provides pathways into music with which I’m not familiar. Critics like dream hampton (on Dee Barnes and gendered violence), Greg Tate (see his review of Azealia Banks’ mixtape Fantasea), Danyel Smith (on the convergence of sports and hip-hop), and Michael Gonzales (on women funkateers) helped me to develop the writerly voice that is often lacking in scholarly writing about pop culture. I have also learned much from reading Nitsuh Abebe (writing about Nicki Minaj and Hot 97), Julianne Escobedo Shepherd (on the history of voguing and on race and music journalism), and Kelefa Sanneh, (his classic piece, The Rap Against Rockism).

Though the outlets for thoughtful writing about pop music/culture are disappearing, you can still find more than a few interesting voices out there. Here are some of my favorite writers and recent pieces of music/cultural criticism:

Saeed Jones’s essay about Laverne Cox, Rembert Browne grappling with being a R. Kelly fan in 2013, low end theory’s take on Odd Future, Cord Jefferson’s What’s 50 Grand to a Revolutionary Like Me?: Watch the Throne and the New Black Power, Heben Nigatu on Kanye West and self-love, Ayesha Siddiqi writing about Chris Brown and the politics of public shaming, Ashon Crawley ‘s pleasure (but not) politics: on Beyoncé, and Safy-Hallan Farah’s Poetic Justice: Drake and East African Girls. Everything Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah pens is pure fire. In her most recent piece on Beyoncé and the Beyhive, the observation about why Beyoncé fans spit so much vitriol against Rihanna is both spot-on and devastating. I first became aware of David Turner through the One Week One Band blog, where he wrote about Lil’ Wayne and have enjoyed seeing his writing develop since then. He also runs the group blog we eat so many shrimp, an important outlet for voices beyond the increasingly dudeistanian hip-hop blogosphere.

Mariame Kaba, who maintains the Prison Culture blog, is at her lovingly fiercest when addressing some of the “smaller” stories found in the crevices of the genocidal spheres of the prison industrial complex and post-racial white supremacy. Kaba writes in a voice that is as indispensable as it is beautiful, for example: We Were Never Meant To Survive: On Quvenzhané Wallis, Intersectionality, & Drones… and Darius, Mo, and Me…

Some of my other regular must-read blogs include Jstheater, Mixtape Maestro, Crunkfeminist Collective, Accalmie/StopTalk, The Public Archive, and Keguro Macharia.

Necessary longer reading:

Hortense Spillers, Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture

Jemima Pierre, The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race

C. Riley Snorton, Nobody Is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low

Tsitsi Jaji, Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music, and Pan-African Solidarity

Nicole Waligora-Davis, Sanctuary: African Americans and Empire

Sylvia Wynter, Towards the Sociogenic Principle: Fanon, The Puzzle of Conscious Experience, of ‘Identity’ and What it’s Like to be ‘Black’

Stuart Hall, Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, TwERK

Sumanth Gopinath, The Ringtone Dialectic: Economy and Cultural Form

Kiese Laymon, Long Division

The playlist features mostly R&B, both mainstream and “indie,” though for me the distinction does not exist, and many artists from Chicago (Jeremih, Chief Keef, The GTW, DJ Rashad, Tink, Sicko Mobb, Jean Deaux, and King Deazel) as well hip-hop, dance music, and a few other genres that embody the spirit of R&B. For example, the vocal cut-up techniques of DJ Rashad’s “Rollin,” UK garage-inspired tracks such as PVC’s “Our Reason” and Toyboy and Robin’s “Jaded” was first heard on dub mixes but also on ‘80s R&B songs like Chaka Khan’s “My Love Is Alive.” Tink embodies the blurred lines between singing and rapping like no one else right now, but Chief Keef’s “Citgo,” Nicki Minaj’s and Lil’ Wayne’s verses on YG’s “My N***a,” and the deliriously exuberant sounds of King Deazel and Sicko Mobb highlight how fundamental choreographing voices is to hip-hop too.

Tink’s track with Future Brown and Jeremih’s collaboration with Shlohmo draw attention to how the worlds of mainstream-ish R&B and off-center dance music are slowly merging, albeit in a different way than the many chopped-up Cassie and Brandy samples that have dominated these quarters of the dance music world. However, the two tracks from Tink’s Winter’s Dairy mixtape, Jeremih’s “Love Hangover” (prod. Pop & Oak), Fantasia’s “Without Me” and Kelly Rowland’s “Gone” (both prod. by Harmony Samuels), Sevyn Streeter’s “nEXT” (prod. Dernst Emile), Courtney Noelle’s “Just Fuckn” (prod. John SK McGee), or Miguel’s “Party Life” with its post-punk guitar and Rene & Angela bassline are no less minimalist or futuristic than the former two. The emergence of “indie R&B” as a music-journalistic category continues the long-standing critical neglect of mainstream R&B performers and producers, as critics often equate indie R&B’s distance from the mainstream (and whatever novelty and innovation that embodies) as distance from what is perceived as stereotypically black.

This is why folks still assume that Aaliyah or Cassie were the first R&B singers to use the restrained, non-melismatic, and smooth singing style favored by the “indie R&B” set, as if Sam Cooke, Cherrelle, Curtis Mayfield, and Dionne Warwick had not existed. In the Twitter flare-up that led to the hashtag #DeepBrandyAlbumCuts, Solange Knowles briefly drew attention to the serious deficiencies in the coverage of contemporary R&B. Though some bloggers and commentators took Solange’s critique seriously, the critical conversation about R&B still considerably lags behind the discussion of hip-hop, to say nothing of indie rock.

While hip-hop producers like Mike Will and DJ Mustard get a lot of props, Rodney Jerkins is still seen as bland. I’m not sure how that’s possible if you’ve listened to the vocal arrangements on Brandy’s “Angel in Disguise” or Destiny’s Child’s “Lose my Breath,” especially the background vocal ad-libs during the bridges. Going back even further, listen to how Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’s production alternates between Alexander O’Neal’s lead vocals and the two different background vocal arrangements on “The Lovers” (from his 1987 album Hearsay, finally available in remastered form) to create sonic tension and drama. One of the most important facets of R&B is the genre’s continual tampering with the human voice, both in terms of the performer’s vocal acrobatics and the technological manipulation of vocal tracks ranging from Marvin Gaye and Michael Jackson brilliantly multitracking their voices, to the extensive use of vocoders and the talkbox, to the Auto-Tune stylings of Tink’s “Lullaby” or Yo Yo Honey Singh’s “Brown Rang.”

Tracklist:

King Avriel—Prelude

SZA—Babylon

The GTW—Calling Cards

P. Morris—Affairs

Kyan—Shuttle

Kwabs—Spirit Fade

Courtney Noelle—Just Fuckn ft. Ty Dolla $ign

Tink—Money Ova Everything

BCKingdom—DWN4U / Jeeps

Mutya, Keisha & Siobhan—Lay Down in Swimming Pools (Kendrick Lamar Cover)

Jeremih—Love Hangover

SZA— Aftermath

King Midas Sound—Meltdown

Jay Boogie—6 Speed

Shlohmo & Jeremih—Bo Peep (Do U Right)

Tinashe—2 On ft. ScHoolBoy Q

Tink—Lullaby

T-Pain—Can’t Believe It ft. Lil’ Wayne

Chief Keef—Citgo

Yo Yo Honey Singh—Brown Rang

Sevyn Streeter—nEXT

Kelly Rowland—Gone ft. Wiz Khalifa

Fantasia—Without Me ft. Kelly Rowland & Missy Elliott

Rihanna—Pour It Up

Shlohmo & Jeremih—No More

Blood Orange—You’re Not Good Enough

Raleigh Ritchie—A Moor

Jean Deaux—Find U (ft. Sampha)

Cooly G–Come into my Room

DJ Rashad—Rollin’

Future Brown—Wanna Party Ft. Tink

YG—My N***a Rmx ft. Lil’ Wayne, Meek Mill, Rich Homie Quan & Nicki Minaj

Ty Dolla $ign—Paranoid ft. Joe Moses

Tink—When I’m Lit ♥ THE GTW REWORK ♥

Sicko Mobb–Remember Me

Sage The Gemini–Red Nose

TeeFlii—This D

Electrik Red—So Good ft. Lil’ Wayne

Miguel—Party Life

King Deazel—Crackin

Sicko Mobb—Fiesta ft. Heavy

Trick Daddy—Take It to Da House

Destiny’s Child—Lose My Breath

Three 6 Mafia—Stay Fly ft. Young Buck, 8Ball, & MJG

Shamir—If It Wasn’t True

PVC—Our Reason

Bwana–Baby Let Me Finish (Black Orange Juice Rmx)

Fuse ODG—Antenna Ft. Wyclef Jean

D’Banj—Oliver Twist

Toyboy & Robin—Jaded

SBTRKT—Living like I Do ft. Sampha (Lil Silva Mix)

Required Reading is a regular feature where we ask people we’re into to tell us what they love. See previous Required Readings with Brad Troemel, Chris Kraus, and the LIES Collective. 

This article appears in issue 5, the Islands Issue. Download here.