beyonce knowles - "work it out"

(neptunes love/hate saga continues, sorry!)

beyonce can be all three members of en vogue at the same time! which is cool, but this should have been sung/rapped by mystikal, as he's the only person who can enliven dry-funk nep-beats like this (i'm only even assuming it's them - if it isnt then my fears about their growing influence are justified); with a competent or even talented singer it just shows up the inherent conservatism at work. all recent progressions of actual substance in r'n'b (interesting and moving narrative, hyper-detailed lyrics, risk-taking sound collisions, unique mood that no other genre could even touch - i'm not saying these things didn't exist before the boom years though!) are scrubbed away till there's just the memory of how fresh "superthug" or "caught out there" sounded a few years back when all this wasn't so familiar. the texture remains but there's just nothing to get excited about; nothing that compels me to keep listening to the radio in case it's played again.

i don't consider innovation or progression much usually (maybe because there's been such an embarrassment of it in r'n'b and hiphop over the past few years, or maybe because i don't really care) but the neptunes are sounding increasingly like a staid reaction to all the fun one-upmanship of the other super-producers, the ones who are still coming up with new ways to make me dance and keep me interested. i promise that's the last i'll say on the matter!