R&B is a catchall term which covers any music that is popular with black American audiences and has been in use since the late 40's. It was originally short for rhythm & blues because that's what it was - basic 12-bar blues, but revved up with honking saxes, pounding pianos and a strong backbeat. Eventually white Americans nicked it and gave it a new name - rock'n'roll. Then came soul which again was called rhythm & blues but more so in America. Eventually as the years have gone by all the feeling, emotion and natural verve have been bled out of the music until you have the bland, gutless, antiseptic muzak that is modern R&B. Nobody even knows what the term stands for now, as there's certainly no blues in this neutered, shallow, colourless sound.
I genuinely did think you were winding us up when you posted that pile of junk as you appeared to have pretty good taste previously. I certainly can't detect any emotion in it - it sounds like a metronome, accompanied by various "found sounds" from the BBC Special Effects Library. Any emotion that the brief snatches of vocal might have conveyed are effectively drowned out by the barrage of burbling, beeping electronic noises.
And yes, it does matter whether or not music is played by real musicians in real time, instead of being a mad scientist's concotion of various tracks from here, there and everywhere. Musicians playing together vibe and react with each other to create a special ambience that manufactured sounds could never match. Just listen to that Billie Holiday track you posted with the jazz guys playing behind her and say it isn't so. That's why REAL rhythm & blues bands like Roomful of Blues, Sharon Jones & The Dapp Kings and Eli "Paperboy" Reed & The True Loves insist on recording their music this way.
I'm sure there'll be someone along to back you up on your allegiance to phoney, manufactured dance music (once they get in from whichever acid house rave they've been to) but the REAL music connoisseurs on Accyweb know where I'm coming from!
