>Does making obvious attempts to cross mean that it's bad or
>poor quality? Thriller, Purple Rain...shit everything on
>Motown was created to sell to as many people as possible of
>all backgrounds so does that automatically make them white
>bread or bland?


No...popularity and mass consumption does not equal white bread or bland...No one has ever said that...In fact, most of our music discussions has gone on record as saying that the '80s was the age of the Cross Over Negro...

The thing for me has always been about the quality of the music and what sounds (to me) like deliberate pandering to sell records...

There is indeed quality cheese out there...I mean "Celebration" by Kool & The Gang was cheesy as hell....lol...But I loved the shit out of that song when I was a kid...So no, that's not even the issue...

It's the blatant distance that Richie went to crossing over along with the quality of the music after his success with the Commodores...And I understand that some folks have a different opinion on that....Welcome to America...



>The reason I asked that question is because I think we can
>forget that mass amounts of Black folks can like some shit
>that other people might look at as corny or white bread.
>George Duke, Grover Washington...Smooth Jazz in general is big
>with a ton of Black audiences so I question the validity of
>calling this stuff white bread simply because it's not gritty.


Indeed...but again, I think you are missing the point...This thread is more about the revisionist history that is being played out by some folks...Not to mention the personal disrespect and hypocrisy being shown over something as fun and trivial as a music discussion...