i think we'll have a lot of "agree to disagree"ments, so i'll just address the below...

but first, one point i forgot to make was how i know that an artist has made something truly unique--it's when i think "oh, this new song sounds just like (that artist)!" recently, when i heard st vincent's "dilletante" and beyonce's "rocket" my first thought was "oh shit, they're making a d'angelo-sounding song!!!" i thought the same thing when i listened to some of the deeper cuts on john mayer's "continuum". there were no other artists to associate those songs with. that made me realize how unique and influential "voodoo" was, 6 to 8 to 14 years later. i still don't think any record before it sounds anything like it.

okay...

>One could look at it like that. I don't think derivative work
>always sounds like
>one particular song... in fact, I think that's pretty rare.
>It's just that once you take
>so many elements of a particular sound or the take them
>without altering them too
>much, it just sounds like something they would have made, if
>that makes sense.
>In more down-to-earth language, you're jacking their style.
>Take for instance Robin Thicke's "Got 2 Be Down" ft. Faith
>Evans. His vocal stylings
>there are obviously derivative of Marvin Gaye. What
>particular Marvin Gaye song?
>I'd have to name plenty, because that's just Marvin's whole
>style being jacked.
>That also happens to be one of Thicke's best songs tho, imo
>lol.
>

yeah i instantly thought "marvin!!!" on the first note thicke sang on that song. even down to the bongos! (there's bongos in that song, right? it's been a while...)

sooo...given the above, i still don't see how d'angelo is any more or less "derivative" than bilal. both pull other elements into their unique sound--to the same degree. both have unique singing voices that are unmistakably them. but unless we come up with some kind of metric to measure this shit, we'll still be disagreeing...which is all good!

granted, i'm working off of 3/4 of bilal's catologue (had "love surreal" for about a wee...wait a minute, EVEN HIS ALBUM TITLE IS DERIVATIVE!!!...and i've always had "1stBS" and "L4S"). but unless he's singning in some made-up language over music that barely makes sense, then i'm gonna assume it's still the same amount of deriving (but even that's not new...sigur ros already did that on their first 2 LPs).


>Lol, I like how you named 7 singers who sing him under the
>table, and that could
>lend itself to why he relies on things like cadence and half
>enunciation as means
>of making himself unique... I'm not sure... but at any rate,
>the unintelligible cadence
>is unique... under-enunciation has been a thing way before
>D'angelo tho.
>Anita Baker was the queen of that when I was younger.

i don't think his stylings are a crutch; another agree to disagree...but fuck that, none of them dudes "singing d'angelo under the table"!!! haha