RandBobit: Teena Marie

Sorry to hear of the Boxing Day death of Teena Marie.

Perhaps the most surprising, but touching, eulogy came from Lenny Kravitz, who admits Marie was more than just an influence:

"I've never really talked much about it in depth, but I would not be here ... if it wasn't for Teena," he confessed. "She took me in when I was around 16. I was just a musician on the street. I was living from pillar to post. She took me in. She gave me a bedroom. She fed me. She cooked for me. She took care of me. She gave me instruments to play. She took me to all her recording sessions. She took me to concerts. She nurtured me and helped me to become who I am. She changed my life not only as an artist but as a person.

"Teena Marie was a treasure, was a genius – composer, arranger, singer, musician, unique [and] underrated by far," Kravitz continued. "I just want to send all my love and respect out to the family."

It says something about Marie's position as an aficionado's choice rather than a mainstream name that Twitter decided it must have been Aretha Franklin who had died.

But she was every bit as good, if not so much of a household name. Look:



It's being reported that Marie, who was 54, might have died from a grand mal seizure.

R&Bobit: Carlton 'King' Coleman

King Coleman, R&B pioneer, has died.

Best known for Do The Mashed Potatoes, and a number of diminishing-returns novelty hits on a similar theme, Coleman's real gift to music was in his work away from the headlines. He was a tireless champion of his fellow musicians, his enthusiasm finding an outlet as a DJ.

Carlton Coleman died in Miami from heart failure. He was 78.

R&Bobit: Tony Thompson

Lead singer with US R&B act Hi Five, Tony Thompson, has been found dead at a Waco apartment block. It's believed he died from an OD. [UPDATE: The autopsy suggested the death was due to poisoning following inhalation of air-conditioning refrigerants rather than illegal drugs.]

Thompson grew up in Oklahoma City, where, like many of his generation, his first public muscial engagements were church-based

Although largely unknown outside the US, in the 1990s Hi-Five sold records by the shedload, peaking with the 1991 number one hit I Like The Way (The Kissing Game). This was also their biggest UK hit, stalling at number 43 in the chart. Nevertheless, the band ran out of steam very quickly, and although they managed three albums, by 1994 it was all over, and the band went to pieces.

Tony went on to release a solo album - Sexsational - to a muted response; aware that his best hope was to reactivate the Hi Five brand, but unable to persuade his other members to commit, he simply 'reformed' the band by recruiting four new members to back him up, including his brother Jordan. This new Hi Five released an album in 2006, the Return, which failed to achieve the heights of the first version of the band.

Tony Thompson was 31.

Pop star Justin Timberlake doesn't like being pop

There's nothing wrong with pop. Indeed, pop music done properly is a wonderful thing. It's not good enough for Justin Timberlake, though, who spends most of Details interview this month moaning about being thought of as pop:

“All of a sudden you’re Mr. ‘SexyBack,’ and before that you were Mr. ‘Cry Me a River.’ I knew I had to take a break when they said the new King of Pop."
[...]
“I tried so hard to be an R&B artist [on his first solo album, Justified] and it was the pop album of the year, and I was like, ‘Fuck. That’s the last thing I wanted,’” Timberlake says, taking a swig from another can of cream soda. “But I was like, ‘So everyone considers me a pop artist? Well, fuck it. I’m going to do whatever I want to do.’”

What's most amusing is that Timberlake seems to value "R&B" above pop, despite "pop" at least being an honest label - unlike R&B, which despite now denoting a musical style with less integrity than pop still tries to pretend its in some way connected with the old R&B, like the way the Rocky Race led monthly Roy of the Rovers tried to claim the lustre and crown of his father's weekly comic.

Timberlake, though, is a man with an awful, awful lot of bitterness:

The internal battle is most evident when he talks about this year’s Grammys. Weeks in advance of the telecast, he was asked to be the star of “My Grammy Moment,” a cheesy, American Idol rip-off bit in which the winner of a contest got to perform onstage with him. Before the idea was fleshed out, Timberlake agreed. As the potentially disastrous plan hurtled to fruition, he ached to back out. He couldn’t. “Because I’m the nice guy who follows through on the things he commits to,” he says, a mock smile locked into place. “But I don’t know if I’ll be going through that sort of thing again. I feel like the Grammys used me for ratings. And look at it—they were up 18 percent.”

Yes, Justin. The 18 per-cent rise in the Grammys audience was all down to you, and nothing to do with this year's programme not going head-to-head with American Idol. And if you were really so uncomfortable with the cheesey contest bit, why didn't you pull out? Really because you'd agreed "before the idea was fleshed out"? You'd given a firm commitment before you'd been told what you were doing and yet still felt obliged to go ahead? Sorry, Justin, if that's true, you're weak, not "nice" and deserve everything you got. A amn who signs on for something not knowing what he's doing is an fool; a man who follows through on a foolish deal is even more of a fool.