Anyone with half an ear on the dance music feted over the past few years will have noticed how much of it features hit R&B singers. At its best, it has been a welcome strategy: little compares to hearing a beloved voice in an unexpected place, woven lovingly into new arrangements or pealing out over club speakers. But the mere presence of a cut-up R&B vocal has also become a cliche, a rote way of reaching for sensuality or emotion by producers cottoning on to a new trend.
Some, though, have taken the logical next step: not content sampling, they are collaborating with major-label R&B artists in a process akin to breaking the fourth wall. In January, the singer Cassie tweeted, in response to a Guardian piece describing her cult status among leftfield musicians: "Fans … can you guys explain this cult following? I really want to meet the guy that they spoke with …" Within 20 minutes, she had been put in touch with "the guy" – Robin Carolan, owner of nascent electronic imprint Tri Angle Records.
Cassie and Carolan are currently discussing potential collaborations, but concrete results have already emerged elsewhere. Brooklyn producer Ezra Rubin, aka Kingdom, has released Take Me – featuring Naomi Allen, of the girl group Electrik Red. It's stunning: Allen swoons and sighs over a beat that's equal parts sharp clarity and dreamy tactility. Midway through, Rubin answers her with a delicate counterpoint melody, and Allen concludes by commanding, "Love me like it's the end of the world and I'm the very – last – girl."
Rubin and Electrik Red hit it off immediately: he calls Electrik Red "a wave of confident female power", while Allen gushes, "On a spiritual level, we really clicked." The experience took both out of their comfort zone. It was the first time Rubin had written a song for a vocalist; describing the difference, he says: "Sampling an existing song is like bending a distant solid object to your will; writing a song is like serenading a blind date." Allen, used to having songs mapped out by experienced writers, raves about the creative freedom it afforded her: "It's like the difference between watching a film and reading. With a film, the characters are there, they're in costume, in set design. When you're reading, you're really creating in your mind what it looks like."
"Everyone was weirded out," says Creep's Lauren Flax of the reaction to their collaboration with Nina Sky. You can see why: Creep's music is dark, gothic and brooding – it got them tagged as "witch house" on their emergence, though Flax and musical partner Lauren Dillard prefer simply "trip-hop". Nina Sky, meanwhile, are mostly known for a classic summer jam – 2004's Move Ya Body – and since then, their music has been best accompanied by blazing sunshine. There's a certain laconic stillness at the heart of both, though, and this aesthetic overlap is what makes their single You work. It was Nina Sky – Nicole and Natalie Albino – who reached out to Creep first: they had been impressed by Flax in her previous incarnation as a house producer, and wanted a "summertime house jam". With Flax immersed in her new project, the music they got was the polar opposite, but the twins – who penned the music and words – were unfazed. "We never back away from anything we're moved by," Nicole says. Flax enthuses about the recording process: "We didn't have to give them any direction, and I think they felt awkward because of that. I'm like, no, really, we are freaking out on the inside because of what you're doing right now!"
These collaborations are potentially trailblazing. Allen points out that every superstar producer was once unknown – "You never know who the next Pharrell, Tricky Stewart, or Dr Dre is" – and tips Kingdom to follow in those footsteps. Dillard, meanwhile, senses a potential sea change in pop away from "this tired wheel of the Black Eyed Peas", saying, "If there's any way we can help shift what pop music is to what it can be, we want to be a part of it. I'm really, really looking forward to music in the next couple of years. You can just feel it coming."
