No Rhythm, Just Blues

You will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.
John Quincy Adams

Since the beginning of mankind black music has been the harmonious link that joins the beat of two or more hearts. I am quite sure the beginning of black life can be traced to a drum or bass. Since slavery,(possibly before) Africans have used music to connect the souls of each other, while skillfully steering clear of the white man's interference. Now today’s black music is mostly played on American radio frequencies owned by white males. Talk about your Shakespearean tragedies.

The Beginning of the End
If you ever wondered what killed the 12-bar rhythm and blues.., well the conspirators are plentiful.
You could start with inception of the disco era and end with misguidance of Teddy Riley and more recently, P. Silly. Oddly, you can also credit Puff The Magic Sampler with keeping some of R&B music alive, since the majority of his gimmicky re-takes started on the wax of an R&B record. However, history remembers black music the end of R&B will be a significant benchmark. Personally, I miss that era.

One of the things that I simply really hate about America is it's crafty intent to put a label on everything. But, like slavery, if it’s to be packaged and sold, it would first need a label… don’t forget the bar code! Rhythm and Blues is really a marketing term birthed in the late 40’s to package black music that was scattered between jazz (remember that?), soul and gospel. Donnie is living proof of black music’s historically blended success—yet no major record company would dare label his music gospel. Hence his contractual independence.

In the 60’s, America got a whiff of the rebellious West Indian vibes from Jamaica, called Reggae.


Who knew it would become the unintended foundation to hip hop music—which is why major radio stations in this country play neither real Reggae nor real Hip Hop. Because (together), like the brave slaves before us, we would probably rebel.

Nile Rogers [the bass player from the R&B group Chic] and the unapologetic soul of James Brown punctuated the stamp of Hip Hop music. And, I think if someone sat down and told the story of black music to 50 Cent and the GED Unit, they would never have polluted this beautiful genre. With any luck they would have just shot each other instead of poising our kids. Although I miss R&B, I know it’s still out there… all you have to do is check the label.




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1 love,
Ray Lewis