I'm doing this post because I have always found it interesting that "unpopular opinions" are always a place where people are given carte blanche to drag and from what I've seen in R&B discourse, some of the things I'm saying are actually the zeitgeist and I am more likely to see someone get attacked for not attacking someone or diminishing someone than the opposite.

What's actually unpopular is newness lol.

So if you're coming here to drag... 🚪🚪🚪

Genre underrepresentation - Blues is something I'm ambivalent about anyone who talks about "R&B being dead" even knowing about let alone ignoring. Etta James, Nina Simone Sam Cooke and Otis Redding come to mind immediately.

• Motown. The word "golden age" is thrown around a lot and this was the first of several "golden ages" for R&B and it's something to watch when people who initiate R&B is dead conversations are unable to riff on this.

• 80s R&B should be mentioned more. Especially when groups like New Edition and Guy existed.

• Alt R&B is the future of the genre and the success of people like SZA and Frank Ocean (who I could call the faces of 2010s R&B) should show both the ways urban music has come to be the zeitgeist and the ways that it can continue to do so. It's kind of the first time I've seen non-urban communities support R&B more than actual R&B listeners do.

Artists - Janet's voice is fine. There seems to be a lot collating "this person is making an artistic choice to do something" with "therefore this is all they are capable of" when it comes to her and it's videos like this https://youtu.be/wAOVLEM5dQ0 rhat tell more to the story of her voice. Everything in this video sounds clean, healthy and distinctive. When I think of someone being what many say Janet is vocally, I think of a person who visibly struggles, has blind spots, would be unable to do something if asked etc. I've yet to see an example being produced when it comes to Janet. Also (and this seems to be a recurring theme with many of the claims coming out of R&B discourse) there seems to be a running trend of not providing evidence for the things someone says lol. I've seen lots of claims about the vocal abilities of the "new girls." (overstated again.) If I was this person and I actually believed that Janet is ambivalent vocally, I would look very dumb saying that and then turning around and saying with a straight face that they could pull of a song like Black Cat or If without being visibly under duress. Oh and also, just to finish... Janet Jackson and Mary J Blige have a note between them as it pertains to vocal ranges http://www.divadevotee.com/2010/12/janet-jackson-vocal-profile-range.html?m=1&ved=2ahUKEwiX0t6HwKX-AhXEYcAKHTQ_A9cQFnoECAgQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1QxdS9RG6gfASEe4bKmcyh http://www.divadevotee.com/2009/03/mary-j-blige-vocal-type-mezzo-soprano.html?m=1&ved=2ahUKEwjYjsiuwKX-AhXNSsAKHXctDDIQtwJ6BAgxEAE&usg=AOvVaw0AsNJbAV8gkGPgjYWE-p3B. That should tell you quite a bit about the significance of artistic choices and that they only tell you part of a story.

• Aaliyah was not, is not, and has never been overrated and the day this argument that I have never understood finally dies will be a great day for discourse about R&B. There's constant accusations of people being "grief stricken" and "sad" about her death which leads to these takes that only 0.000000001% percent of discourse includes... With no proof whatsoever that this is being said at all. I'm actually more likely to see people like T-Pain just out of nowhere attack her for no reason than I can tell you that when I look at her work over the eight years she was in the music industry (discography that is) I actually think she's underrated and that what is not spoken about are the testimonials from people like Whitney Houston https://youtu.be/FudW1jp8xLE Janet Jackson https://youtu.be/Qhz8paeXCNE during her life, which kind of blows apart the narrative that anything ever said about Aaliyah was after her death. This is ignoring the countless people who've claimed to be influenced by Aaliyah (especially in the past ten years) such as Syd, Kehlani (she is giving me Brandy more than anything) Victoria Monet, Rochelle Jordan, Normani etc and considering many of them were children or became aware of Aaliyah at the time of her death it's kind of dumb to suggest that they're all just "hyping her up because she's dead." The only other people who have gotten this much adulation are her peers Brandy and Usher, who have also both in life and death spoke about her highly (and are also underrated) Almost every argument I've heard about this seems to be "I saw something on Twitter and it irritated me" and it just makes me feel like your ability to accurately ascertain anything about discourse on any subject is being affected by what I'm gonna call Twitter derangement syndrome. The host of YouKnowIGotSoul has it something ridiculous and it's now more cloying to hear about Twitter from him than it actually is to be on it. Like dude, no-one cares about what R&B Twitter said that annoyed you for the umpteenth time this week, just do your job lmao. If my tone is taciturn, it's because I've seen takes like this from people who claim to be about fairness and being "balanced" and it's just interesting that the balance always seems to be about being as contrarian as possible just for the sake of it even when you have no evidence whatsoever lol. Just give people their accolades if they have them.

• TLC and En Vogue should be mentioned more in discourse. They were the closest things to a new age Supremes at the time and along with TLC are among the greatest groups of all time in the genre.

• Blackstreet and Boyz II Men should also be included more in discourse because they are also among the greatest groups of all time in the genre and, along with TLC and En Vogue, were kind of prototypical hip hop soul groups of their time.

• Amerie and Kelis are underrated.

• Alicia and John are super underrated.

• FKA Twigs and Sampha are also super underrated.

• Beyonce is a living breathing, 21st century dialectic on how R&B artists can makes bodies of work in the vein that rock and pop artists do and Lemonade is the formula for that.

That's it.

What are yours?