>As for my take
>- real life cred - street cred in hip hop, church cred in
>R&B.
>
>Does it make a difference to sales? To the quality of the
>art?

sales?...in hip-hop it seems to. i highly doubt so many of us would've taken to NWA if we knew where Dre and Cube grew up for real. in R&B, not so much...and i say that b/c there aren't concerted efforts to disprove anyone's church cred the way some go out of their way to discredit rappers (see: Jay-Z & Prodigy, 50 & Ja Rule).

quality...emphatic 'no' on both counts.

>- Underlying this whole concept, to me at least, is the idea
>that black people are merely spiritual beings, and that
>there is little if any thought/logic that goes into our art.
> I.E, we only have souls and not brains, relegating black
>people to mere savages. The only way we can create art is
>by channelling these raw emotions, brought on By God, or by
>"the streets".

i agree completely.

>all this talk of polish vs unpolish....
>
>Yet seemingly there was a post about Al Green I believe, in
>which folks wanted to dissect his "soulful" performance as
>being calculated, so calculated, that so called "real
>niggas" really couldn't tell the difference. (but that one
>trailed off into some crap about performance, and I would
>say "channelling")

i remember that 1. it was good.

>- The average public, even a specialized group like this,
>doesn't do well with abstract ideas. This post really isn't
>about Beyonce or Joss Stone, yet that's all that people can
>seem to talk about.

...yeah.

>Can this topic be discussed w.o focusing one a handful of
>artists? I can understand the need to make things concrete,
>to see if the theory holds, but seemingly no one can think
>about this in terms of 20-30 artists.

i'm at the point where i immediately disbelieve artists who talk about their church upbringing just like i disbelieve those who claim to have been gangstas (i see you, Ray J). to me it's all hype and it seems folks are trying to latch onto the cred bestowed upon legends from the past (i hear you, Aretha)...Fire even said Yonce's church roots place her in the company of Black music legends. since we live in a time where artists are so uber-aware of the bizz i just can't believe media kit material anymore.

can we (the Lesson) talk about this church cred phenomenon? i hope so.