NPR's 50 Great Voices: Biggie
sindian
68 Posts
I've been catching up on Morning Edition, and it appears Biggie made NPR's 50 Great Voices list:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128916682
It appears Lauryn Hill made the cut too:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128149135
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128916682
It appears Lauryn Hill made the cut too:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128149135
Comments
Yeah, the comments are depressing. Respect to NPR for putting a rapper on the list. They must have known there'd be backlash.
I like that they brought in AZ to explain the concept of flow.
Busta Rhymes
Chuck D
Slick Rick
Scarface
They seem like good choices if you're going on the voice alone.
And yeah, the people who comment on NPR's site are pretty much as lame as they are everywhere else. The main difference is that many aren't used to getting slammed back on and tend to get flustered when challenged.
Check for the Donny Hathaway and Ella Fitzgerald episodes too; I thought they were well done.
BTW: I'm taping a "Great Voices" segment later this morning, should run next week or so.
has the complete list been released or do they just reveal it every week?
Not at all. Very few are even in the same ballpark.
Never, ever read the comments regarding anything rap-related on NPR's site.
Unless they're well-moderated. Which is to say, almost none of them.
They reveal every week. Smart move since it avoids the inevitable, "but where was [fill in the blank of your favorite singer]" whining.
What do you mean by "strictly political reason"?
"strictly" is overstating it, i should have said heavily politicized. i will wait for the entire list to come out before criticizing it too much but the lauren hill and biggie picks sort of feel forced and maybe a bit of an attempt to seem "diverse", contemporary and to pander to certain audiences. if their pop culture personas weren;t so out sized would they really make this list? if lauren hill makes the list but someone like anita baker doesn;t then you know something is fishy.
i am looking forward to revisiting this thread when the list is complete and we can debate this proper.
incidentally, how were the selections made? do you get to choose what artist you will cover?
the public nominated folks on npr.org a while back. I believe an editorial committee picked the final 50.
But also, I believe the whole series intended to go beyond the obvious. Like Frank Sinatra didn't make the cut because everyone knows he has a great voice (I think O-Dub said almost exactly that in the little piece that introduced the series on npr some months back). So yeah, that's might explain why someone like Lauren Hill made the list and not Ms. Baker.
But regardless, "50 Greatest Voices" is an impossible task. And people always hate on lists like this. Always. Personally, I've enjoyed hearing about a lot of folks from around the world that I have never heard of before.
Why?
Anita Baker may be a technically superior singer, but I think Lauryn's voice has more character.
well, anita baker i suppose still has time to make the list but to me anita's voice has a superior timbre, depth, technical and emotional range and her career has been a hell of lot more productive than ms. hill's but a lot less flashy. she also phrases better. i like lauryn's voice but it isn;t even the same league as far as i am concerned.
I'd like to see Andy Bey appear on this list too
This is NOT a list of the 50 greatEST voices.
Nor is this a list of the 50 Greatest Singers.
It is only a list of 50 great voices.
As long as there are no ungreat voices they have lived up to billing.
No doubt they picked the voices based on diversity and what would make a good radio story.
Nothing wrong with that.
What do you think the "whole idea of this list" exactly is?
The basic principle has always been "let's highlight 50 great voices from around the world."
The only part, in my opinion, that is flawed is that in choosing 50, you're leaving out hundreds of other, equally qualified nominees. But it'd be a mistake to assume the 50 that were chosen were somehow better than the ones that were not. This was never, ever, an exercise in canon-making and never, ever, claimed to be.
In hindsight, I think it would have been smarter to simply call the series "Great Voices" without putting a numerical limit on it (at least not publicly). Once you put a number on it, even if you're not pushing for a kind of hierarchy of voices, that becomes an inevitable part of the reception.
I can say this much: with Lauryn, part of the thinking was A) "she's got a great, distinctive voice" (which she does) AND B) "she helps us to get some R&B AND hip-hop inclusion" (aka she's a two-fer). But if you read the comments on that Biggie segment, you'd realize that it's stilly to think that NPR feels like it needs to pander to a hip-hop crowd considering how many vocal hip-hop haters listen to NPR. No doubt, there's a lot of grumpy assholes out there pissed off we included ANY hip-hop artists on the list.
Someone else asked about "process". NPR originally asked listeners to make their suggestions, then they convened about a dozen people (non NPR staffers) together on a party line to both 1) make other suggestions and 2) start to whittle the list down. The FINAL decision on who made the list rested with a team of NPR staffers. I'm almost certain the reason why Biggie got picked came down to a single staffer; had this same person been more of a Busta fan, Busta might have made it instead. Biggie was part of the original master list though, so it's not like someone snuck him in out of nowhere.
Definitely.
Nice, I'll check those out. I've been enjoying the series. It's introduced me to some voices I wouldn't have heard otherwise.
I was pushing for Alton Ellis too but I got no probs with Brown making it. Marley was treated like Sinatra - so obvious as to be a disqualification (of course, one could also have said that about Aretha and Ella but...)
Anita Baker >> Lauryn Hill
True but that wasn't the thinking at NPR. Lauryn, as I suggested before, was a two-fer. Biggie was an individual staffer's "must have". There's a lot more "white-friendly" voices from both r&b and hip hop that got passed over. There were definitely attempts to triangulate picks to serve multiple purposes but audience tastes weren't an overriding concern.
I put Pac w/ dudes like GURU. Instant Recognition but not GREAT.
When i first heard Same Song I wasnt blown away by dudes VOICE.
When I first heard Public Enemy #1 I was blown the hell away.
But i guess its just Staff Picks/Mind Garden opinions so whatevs.
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=129345910&m=129383575