SinnerCity Posted January 19 Posted January 19 17 minutes ago, swissman said: RENAISSANCE is far from being "ballroom-coded" because there is absolutely no deciphering of any code that needs to be done. There's no ambiguity about whether or not RENAISSANCE has ballroom elements. It decidedly is ballroom-inspired, not in totality but like the others you mentioned, in certain songs. PURE/HONEY may contain multiple samples, but the result is one that actually includes the work of three legitimate ballroom artists. So, it's not "coded" with ballroom, it's inclusive of it. Whether that means she created an entirely new ballroom beat, or riffed off existing ones, that doesn't really make a difference to this specific conversation where the question is if she brought it to the forefront. It literally has everything to do with the conversation because someone cannot be credited for making something mainstream if the body of work in mention is not even a truthful representation of the genre in question, in this case, House Disco but go off. I said, no pop girl can be credited for making ballroom music (disco house) mainstream because none of them have produced a body of work remotely original nor given truthful productions (with a handful of exceptions of some album tracks that include elements) of House disco.
swissman Posted January 19 Posted January 19 (edited) 32 minutes ago, SinnerCity said: It literally has everything to do with the conversation because someone cannot be credited for making something mainstream if the body of work in mention is not even a truthful representation of the genre in question, in this case, House Disco but go off. I said, no pop girl can be credited for making ballroom music (disco house) mainstream because none of them have produced a body of work remotely original nor given truthful productions (with a handful of exceptions of some album tracks that include elements) of House disco. How much more truthful to the genre can you get than legitimately including primary source material in your work? The question "did she bring it to the forefront?" doesn't rely on whether or samples are used, unless that sampled track was already in the forefront. Originality is an entirely different conversation here. And I'm not even arguing that she brought house/ballroom to the forefront, I'm saying it's weird to call something "far far from actually being ballroom coded" when it factually contains direct inclusion of legendary voices, beats and lyrics of the genre it is apparently so far from. Yes, the entire album is not ballroom, but much of it is, and when it is, it is not even "coded", it's very clearly and unambiguously ballroom-inspired. Edited January 19 by swissman
swissman Posted January 19 Posted January 19 (edited) The very name of the album RENAISSANCE seeks to bring forward styles and histories that have either been forgotten, neglected or excluded from the mainstream. We can argue whether or not someone did it first, and I think many did it before Beyoncé (Azealia Banks perhaps being the most important one, but also very notably Teyana Taylor did it too in 2018), but we cannot say Beyoncé's use has not in many ways brought forward the genre in a new way...if not by giving something the public has outright never heard before, then by bringing in a specifically new conversation around it following in the footsteps of Pose and Legendary, but doing so in such a way that has resulted in a song like BREAK MY SOUL reaching #1. Edited January 19 by swissman
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