R. Kelly or D'Angelo...who you got?

[IllmaticDelta]

people who grew up on trad soul/funk like








........will always choose d'angelo over rkelly

 

[NormanConnors]

D'Angelo is great at what he does, but R. Kelly just has so much more going on. I get why people would prefer D, but come on.

D'Angelo is like a Ka or Roc Marci.
R. Kelly is Ghostface Killah or Nas.

Terrible comparisons

 

[bigbadbossup2012]

Breh isnt seeing D at all, LIVE or on WAX

d aint even competition for kells.
Kell's coulda stopped after his 95' album and d wouldnt catch up

 

[IllmaticDelta]

I gotta agree with Billy Ocean. He was simply a soul artist, with a hip-hop twist. Hell, Mary was in that category before D'Angelo. They wen't back a reclassified him as "neo-soul" when they saw that the music had a legitimate mainstream market.

Neo soul is more than soul with a hiphop twist. HipHop soul of mary j is soul singing over hiphop beats. Neo Soul goes far beyond that with it's live jazzy/rock/blues/funk/deep housy electronica etc..feel

Technically, Kels is much closer to Prince than D'Angelo would ever be. This isn't about whose music you like better, but the output doesn't compare. And I really don't agree that D'Angelo has the vocal range of Kels. He's nowhere as versatile or has the pen game. No matter what, you're gonna get a D'Angelo track from him. But with the R penning for others, you got different styles. Instruments and more digestible music is where D'Angelo trumps Kels, because sometimes you're not in the mood to hear the explicit type of music R was known for,everything else you have to give to R.

 

[Billy Ocean]

he's done those type of songs but they aren't his forte/what people know him for

People know him for what? See that's the disconnect between you and the other D'Angelo stans in here and the ones who prefer R. Kelly. You folk in here trying to claim that R. Kelly is mostly known for his playful, sometimes misogynistic , Hip Hop fused music when he's not. His biggest hits are his traditional R&B and soul records.

dude, Im positive if you ask people who who grew up on motown, stax, chitown soul etc.. who is better between r kelly and d'angelo, they will pick d'angelo 9/10.

I don't know who you're around, but the older heads I'm around ABSOLUTELY LOVE R. Kelly. These are the folks that listened to Smokey Robinson, The O'Jays, The Temptations, Al Green...growing up. I don't see how you can make such an absolute claim.

Im fully aware of his body of work. His most popular stuff falls under hiphop soul. His more trad R&B sound is good but not on the level of D'angelos. The tracks that most older heads (55+ years of age) like by R Kelly is stuff like Stepping In The Name of Love. They don't listen to stuff like "Down Low" lol. Now, I rock with those kelly songs because Im from a younger generation but to put it into context..


Looking Back to 1999 When D’Angelo Said R&B Had Become ‘A Joke’, Let’s See If He Was Right




Looking Back to 1999 When D'Angelo Said R&B Had Become 'A Joke', Let's See If He Was Right - YouKnowIGotSoul.com

No...the MAJORITY of his music DOES NOT fall under "Hip Hop soul". Again...the disconnect. We can go over R. Kelly's discography and the vast majority of his music does not fall under that prism. He has done it, and done it well, but he does so much more than that. And that lil piece you posted is elitism crap. D'Angelo himself has said that R. Kelly was a hero and was influenced by him. That piece is your normal biased fare. Even when Kelly was making “Fiesta”, “Ignition”, “Snake” and “Thoia Thong” in the early 00’s, he was making Greatest Sex, World's Greatest, Fortunate, Heart of A Woman, and I Don't Mean It. That piece is implying that he was solely doing those Hop Hop style tracks. Disingenuous bullshyt.

 

[Dre Space Age]

Half of that shyt is subjective, and if you compare the work Kelly does to D’Angelo on the production tip, D’Angeo wins in a landslide.

How does the guy who wrote “Trapped in the closet” and “I believe I can fly” comparable to the guy who wrote the “Brown Sugar” album by himself when he was like 19

Brehs just say crazy shyt. Post some R Kelly “classics” so we can see how dated they sound.

There’s no way R Kelly is “more creative” than d’angelo - you obviously don’t understand the process that went into VooDoo. There were guys playing bass and guitar on the same time on certain songs. D’angelo was working out of Electric Ladyland, him and Questlove helped break down how drums should be played. On Black Messiah, D’Angelo learned how to play guitar and would make his own patches for sounds (shyt r Kelly never did, because no ones done that since the 70s)

I’m actually offering why D’angelo’s better, instead of just saying subjective shyt as if that matters. The only thing Kelly has over him, is he worked with more artists. But D’angelo worked with the soulquarians, and defined a new genre of music which had an impact to this day with all the neo-soul wannabes.

Damn that's dope. I can see why you think D'Angelo wins production-wise due to the amount of work he put in to learn new instruments and create arrangements.

However, what use is all that work if it results in filler? Sounds like he's going through the Prince sydrome.

R Kelly can play piano and produce music as well. Some of the melodies for his songs started on piano that he played himself. And they are so good that the end result is that we can actually REMEMBER these songs.

I can barely remember D'Angelo's music beyond his first album. His first album was perfect because it was raw talent. After that, he just fell off. He may be evolving with production techniques but his raw energy fell all the way fukk off.

 

[Billy Ocean]

Terrible comparisons

Ghostface Killah himself, the most consistent member and a universally considered GOAT MC from a group you're a big fan of, says he's like Hip Hop's R-Kelly because of his creativity and consistency. He has said on several occasions that he wants to get on a track with R. Kelly. Check out his No Jumper interview that dropped this week.That was a very astute comparison. D'Angelo is not on R. Kelly's level so that Roc Marci comparison was quite accurate cause Roc is dope but he's no Ghostface


@Soymuscle Mike

 

[Billy Ocean]

lol, I voted D but appreciate Kells body of work is vast. The bolded is laughable tho

R. Kelly is the better vocalist. One of the rare artists that sound better live than on wax.

 

[The G.O.D II]

Neo soul is more than soul with a hiphop twist. HipHop soul of mary j is soul singing over hiphop beats. Neo Soul goes far beyond that with it's live jazzy/rock/blues/funk/deep housy electronica etc..feel

I think Neo soul was also just more melodic and featured more instrumentation. Like most of early Badu and D’Angelo was all instrumentation. No drum track, no pre programmed arrangements. All live bass, percussion, electric guitar. R&B was pretty much dominated by contemporary mainstream R&B. Artist like boyz to men, Jodeci, Mary, Toni Braxton, etc were great but there was nothing distinguishable about them. DAngelo came through and blew the doors off

 

[Billy Ocean]

I think Neo soul was also just more melodic and featured more instrumentation. Like most of early Badu and D’Angelo was all instrumentation. No drum track, no pre programmed arrangements. All live bass, percussion, electric guitar. R&B was pretty much dominated by contemporary mainstream R&B. Artist like boyz to men, Jodeci, Mary, Toni Braxton, etc were great but there was nothing distinguishable about them. DAngelo came through and blew the doors off

Part of the reason that nobody is taking you dudes seriously in here is because you folk continue to try to say sideways shyt about very accomplished, legendary and beloved artists like R. Kelly, Jodeci, Mary, etc just to prop up D'Angelo.

Damn near everyone in this thread who has said they prefer R. Kelly (which is most of the people in here) has said that D'Angelo is dope. No one is shyttin on him. We know he has talent and makes good music. Why can't you guys just post why you prefer his style of music and why you think he's more talented without having to try to throw other, sometimes much more accomplished artists, under the bus? A good portion of the artists you guys are trying to shyt on has music that ALOT of folk love and play WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY more than D'Angelo's. Music that was the soundtrack of their youth and that they will play til they die, no matter how "groundbreaking" ya'll may believe D'Angelo is.

 

[Black Bolt]

R. Kelly is the better vocalist. One of the rare artists that sound better live than on wax.

Lmao! That ain't the hill you wanna die on. Kells can blow no doubt but he's not seeing D'Angelo on that front at all

 

[Billy Ocean]

Lmao! That ain't the hill you wanna die on. Kells can blow no doubt but he's not seeing D'Angelo on that front at all

Ok

 

[brownsugah]

Damn that's dope. I can see why you think D'Angelo wins production-wise due to the amount of work he put in to learn new instruments and create arrangements.

However, what use is all that work if it results in filler? Sounds like he's going through the Prince sydrome.

R Kelly can play piano and produce music as well. Some of the melodies for his songs started on piano that he played himself. And they are so good that the end result is that we can actually REMEMBER these songs.

I can barely remember D'Angelo's music beyond his first album. His first album was perfect because it was raw talent. After that, he just fell off. He may be evolving with production techniques but his raw energy fell all the way fukk off.

Just shut all the way up.

 

[nieman]

Neo soul is more than soul with a hiphop twist. HipHop soul of mary j is soul singing over hiphop beats. Neo Soul goes far beyond that with it's live jazzy/rock/blues/funk/deep housy electronica etc..feel

There was R&B Soul and there was whatever was mainstream when D'Angelo debuted. These artists were considered R&B Soul. Raphael Saadiq, Sade, Gil Scott-Heron, Meshelle whatever her last name is, Jamariquai, whatever R&B music Q-Tip was working on, were all before D'Angelo. Their influence far trumps his, because he wasn't even as active. if you're gonna give the title to anyone, it goes to Raphael Saadiq. Neo soul ended up being some ish they threw out there to lump all of the "outside of the mainstream" artists they could no longer figure out what to do with. And by the time it became a subgenre, it was moreso a look.

 

[GPBear]

Damn that's dope. I can see why you think D'Angelo wins production-wise due to the amount of work he put in to learn new instruments and create arrangements.

However, what use is all that work if it results in filler? Sounds like he's going through the Prince sydrome.

R Kelly can play piano and produce music as well. Some of the melodies for his songs started on piano that he played himself. And they are so good that the end result is that we can actually REMEMBER these songs.

I can barely remember D'Angelo's music beyond his first album. His first album was perfect because it was raw talent. After that, he just fell off. He may be evolving with production techniques but his raw energy fell all the way fukk off.

DAngelo’s put out three albums his entire career, and you’re accusing him of filler. As if being like prince is bad
The entire point of his musical career is that he doesn’t ever put out any filler. That’s one of the most absurd statements I’ve read.


Meanwhile, how many “Trapped in the closets” were there?


D’Angelo’s a piano virtuoso.