The Singles Jukebox

Finally, Maciej Kasperowicz recommends an R&B group that is named so because they are five brothers, not after a bingo square…

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[6.22]

Crystal Leww: I watched You Got Served again this weekend, and it’s remarkable how next level B2K were. The movie came out in 2004, and it’s kind of corny, but those boys were really phenomenal dancers on top of being great musicians. Step Up came out in 2006, and it launched a franchise, both with lesser music and a much less racially diverse cast. B2K’s 2013 equivalent, Mindless Behavior, released an album earlier this year that was criminally under-appreciated, both by America at large and also in critical circles, too. The whitewashing of pop music has been a pretty damning and continuous narrative for years now, and it’s not just about rap or solo male musicians: we’ve forgotten about black boy bands, too. B5 helped bridge the generational gap between B2K and MB, and they’ve suffered from a lack of coverage on all fronts. Struggling through most of the end of last decade, they finally released some new music in the form of “Say Yes”. It’s remarkable in how timeless it sounds. The vocals are old school R&B jams, with harmonies that literally doo-wop. The backup brothers provide acapella-style vocals, but with instruments (and real drums), these sound smooth and not corny. Yet, the chopped and screwed “if I ask you this question, you gon’ tell me yes”, the subtle synths, the ramp up drum noises sound so modern, like an old fashioned style updated for 2013. It’s hard to imagine the type of fan fervor that One Direction inspires for Mindless Behavior or B5. It’s a shame; their melodies have always been more on point, and they can dance their asses off, too.
[8]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: EXCLUSIVE: Ex-Bad Boy survivors escape from Diddy’s Island of Misfit Toys, where they vow to rescue Dream and Gorilla Zoe after locating their betrothed. (Seriously though – it’s sweet, treacly even. We need more embargoes situated on chopped’n’screwed bridges/outros.)
[6]

Alfred Soto: The ooh-ooh-ooh hook is ingratiating, the tugging strings unexpected, the vocoderized interpolation redundant. It’s possible the producers hoped something would stick.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Front-loading that woozy sample puts the rest of the song on notice. Like the doo-wop breakdown, it’s a nod toward grown-man status. So why the screwed vocal? It’s a bit Home Security Decoys. The guys don’t have much to add, but they’re not looking for a dissertation in response.
[7]

Anthony Easton: I have no idea what’s going on here. The bass Autotuned bullying that stops questions and demands answers is as manipulative as those beginning strings, and as grating as the electronic gimcrackery throughout. 
[1]

Scott Mildenhall: How could you say no? Everything is just waiting to burst into life. The strings, for instance, are pinched, try, try, trying again and again before they get to the stage of swelling, swelling — and yet no big release. B5 are barely contained amid the nods towards the past or by their grounding in the very present. The overall effect is puppyish.
[7]

Mallory O’Donnell: The creaky doo-wop (bed)chamber music keeps you looming at the door, the brothers five lure you in with Philly street corners and crooked Southern angles. Baroque robots promise instant pleasure at the price of eternal deferral. The chorus passes on a “yeah,” but it’s more duck out than hands up. The screw vocal is overkill, we already know this dude is high. Still, we’d probably say yes as well.
[7]

Sonya Nicholson: “B5 Ages” is the third item in the suggested terms list for this group, getting at what might be the most interesting thing about them, which is that they’ve been around for a while. Most of this song is forgettable but the moment the build drops out and leaves the main guy singing “lay” (it on the line) is GREAT. I like that they’re putting a little bit of effort into the choreography, and that the song wraps up neatly.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: 2013 is the year boy bands came back, which really means that One Direction did. Of the others who supposedly came back, The Wanted, who code more urban, stalled at third place (second place is also One Direction), JLS are splitting up, and Mindless Behavior, who make perfectly fine pop-n-B and, more cynically, whose fans generate pageviews comparable to the endgame of Cookie Clicker, are generally ignored. To be fair, so are Big Time Rush and Union J and so on, and the 2000 era fared similarly, because the mainstream music press has always had time for two or three boy bands max, — but in 2013, with its perhaps-unprecedented zero black lead artists in the top 10 of the year-end Hot 100, it fits the pattern.) This bodes perhaps less well than it could for B5’s comeback (from 2005 and Hannah Montana, and don’t extrapolate), but whatever happened with the reception isn’t the music’s fault. “Say Yes” is both timely (the chopped-and-screwed background vocals) and lively (the cellos at the start, rumpled like sheets); the percussion is perhaps a bit dated, and the “you flow like the Nile” verse needs to be flung into one of Cairo’s recent snowdrifts, but everything else is a sumptuous love ballad of the type I rather miss.
[6]