The pantheon of legendary female rockers and rappers is
woefully small. The pantheon of legendary female DJs and dance producers is
virtually nonexistent. Even your average manufactured pop poppet has to
work harder than her boy-band counterpart, who can rely on looks alone to
generate pubescent squeals.
Anyone angered by this state of affairs can take heart from the thought
that in at least one genre, women currently reign unchallenged. For years
now, R&B has been a hive of female empowerment. The biggest stars are
female, the best records are made by women. The big producers may be male,
but the Neptunes, Timbaland and Rodney Jerkins invariably save their best
ideas for female singers.
The result has been a string of triumphant
singles from Beyonce Knowles, Brandy, Tweet and Kelis. Meanwhile, male R&B
singers seem content to make endless ”slow jams” in which beats limp
wearily along and you’re never more than a few seconds away from a tedious
offer to ”freak you all night long”. Usher, R Kelly, and K-Ci and JoJo
seem like a dying breed, beaten by a sort of musical natural selection,
their grip on the collective imagination so tenuous that, recently, they
have been usurped in the public’s affections by Justin Timberlake.
The declining fortunes of the male soul singer may well be the late
Barry White’s most lasting legacy. Before his early-70s emergence, male R&B
singers were complex and intriguing figures. Curtis Mayfield was blessed
with the ability to cram articulate, incisive social commentary into
dance-floor-packing songs. Isaac Hayes transformed middle-of-the-road
standards into epic meditations on life.
Al Green and Marvin Gaye seemed tortured by the conflict between
spirituality and sensuality that lies at the heart of soul music, a genre
born out of gospel, yet primarily concerned with sex.
The arrival of White
changed everything. His records were fantastically well written and
beautifully orchestrated but there was nothing complex, spiritually
tortured or socially aware about them. It was straightforward, easily
accessible clothes-off stuff, and it sold in vast quantities.
Perhaps
understandably, it was incredibly influential on every subsequent male soul
vocalist. Why bother with torturing yourself with all that stuff about
religion and politics when you can shift huge numbers of records the Barry
White way?
If White was reductive, the artists that followed him narrowed his
blueprint further, jettisoning White’s oft overlooked sense of humour. The
cover of his 1981 greatest-hits set The Best of Our Love is a case in
point. A heavily airbrushed White leers from a giant heart, surrounded by
garlands of flowers, lurid butterflies and small birds. Possibly concerned
that potential buyers might consider this approach too discreet, the
designer has added two turtle doves with red roses in their beaks, swooping
towards White’s remarkable bouffant hairstyle as if planning to nest in it.
It’s impossible to imagine that White approved this packaging with a
straight face — he was no Liberace, but a former gang member who had done
time in a juvenile prison — just as it seems unlikely that he could have
sung Love Serenade (Part One) without lodging his tongue in his mammoth
cheek.
Several of White’s obituaries quoted its lyrics — ”I don’t want to
see no panties/Take off that brassiere, my dear” — but none noted that the
words are punctuated by what sounds suspiciously like White chuckling to
himself.
Most of his audience seemed to miss White’s humour, and so did most of
the singers who took him as their model. The laughs modern male R&B singers
provide are all unwitting: the vociferously heterosexual trio who called
themselves Kreuz, oblivious to their name’s connotations; R Kelly
responding to his arrest for child pornography – including a video alleged
to show him urinating on a teenage girl – with Heaven I Need a Hug, a song
which earnestly demands ”shower down on me, wet me with your love”.
Po-faced self-importance may be their own addition to the recipe, but in
every other respect, these artists are White’s progeny: one-dimensional
lovermen with nothing more to say than ”Get your knickers off”.
Meanwhile, female soul stars started emerging — feisty, intriguing,
unpredictable, they were everything their male counterparts were not.
You could, of course, argue that it is wrong to judge an artist by the
music they inspire. Complaining because Barry White begat Usher and R Kelly
is like rubbishing the Beatles on the grounds that they inspired Freddie
and the Dreamers. You could instead draw attention to two recent CD
reissues of 1974 albums that White produced and arranged, Gloria Scott’s
What Am I Gonna Do and Love Unlimited’s In Heat, and defy anyone to find
fault with their swirling orchestration, taut rhythms and glorious,
instinctive pop sensibility.
But perhaps White might be happy with the way his legacy stands. After
all, he seemed to think of music as essentially female. ”Lady Music is
Barry White’s first lady,” he told one interviewer. ”When I’m with Lady
Music, I really have to satisfy her.” As it turned out, he may have been
music’s most unwitting feminist. His influence enabled R&B to become an
entirely female-dominated genre. Lady Music is presumably over the moon. — Â