I think we ask our new generation of real artist....including non-soulaquarion ones...to carry too much of the burden created from the commercial overloaded music scene today.

I remember when D came along and ....everyone wanted to crown him as the savior of R&B. And as good as Brown Sugar was...this was a very naive statment because soul(like all genres) has many different facets and D only represented a few.

Same with the Roots, Erykah,etc....

As great or average as you may find these artist to be..(I think they are great)....they will never SAVE their respected genres (not unless the record 3 to 4 albums a year that span several different directions including mainstream) or should we pump ourselves up to expect such a feat.

I'm not sayin' this to belittle their talent, influence, or importance ( because they have a helluva lot of all three...IMO)

I say this to free them of all this unjust pressure to be everything( which can be self-induced if an artist also buys into the hype) in hopes that they continue to bless me with music as they feel it. (cause I believe any good music-first artist will change and develop naturally with time in grade.)

And I avidly agree with Quest as far as their (Soulaquarians) growth...but also would like to add that while growth, development, change is refreshing...its only neccessary (IMO) when an artist's style has saturated his audience and with the natural progression of time.

think about it...while we hate when artist stop progressing and give us the same ole thang....don't we equally hate when they don't give us enough of something that may be uniquely theirs...in efforts to always be different.

Finally, (yeah!!) I think if I put this argument in perspective then you might see my point. While today it seems we always look for that one artist (or this case crew) to carry the load....if you look at the old school soul artist, you'll find that you probably like a myriad of artists who are linked by a common bond of realness but all have distinct sounds....such as Earth, Wind & fire, The Isleys, George Clinton, Maze, etc...now,pick up the greatest hits album from any of em and check how similar some songs sound versus the release dates....these artist took half a decade (sometimes a whole decade) to give the kinda diversity that some of us insist on per album with our modern era artists.....

and for all you that champion Prince for his ability to "do it all"...he 's the exception to the rule ....not becuase he's neccessarily better (not trying to argue if he is or not) but because he doesn't edit himself as much....with all the hits come a bunch of bullshit(imo) to weed through to get to em.........(I'm not hatin'...some of my favorite shit wouldn't have made it if it was the other way around with P)......but that's P....whom ironcially, I think Master P took lessons from as far as putting a whole lot of recordings out with...(ahem!)...lets' call it "relaxed scrutiny." LOL!

CED