My reaction to B.o.B.

Announced this week was the announcement that B.o.B will be performing for this year’s Homecoming. Many people were excited, other not so much. Personally, I’m not sure where I stand since I am only familiar with a few of B.o.B’s popular songs, not his entire catalog; and for those of us who saw Sean Kingston last year, a few songs do not make a concert. One of my friends jokingly said that he hoped all the collaborative artists on B.o.B’s album , such as Eminem, would make an appearance on stage (it seems as if every hip-hop song has “featuring so-and-so” in parenthesis next to the title these days). After hearing this, I realized how strange live hip-hop must be.

I don’t go to many concerts (being such the music lover, shame on me!), so I don’t know all the details about concerts. However, I don’t think that an artist would be flown out to sing the hook, or a verse to one song in a concert! So how do they get around it? I was told that if the chorus or hook was sung by a collaborating artist, then the recording was merely played along with the back-up music. This sounds fine initially, but if you think about it, the concert turns into a glorified karaoke performance! In no way am I putting down hip-hop music, but the nature of the music normally requires that there be back-up music since the spoken voice is the center of the music, rather than instrumentation. And I am all for artist collaboration; it can really help develop a sound for different artists.

I am looking forward to seeing B.o.B perform live. It’ll give me a chance to see whether or not pre-recorded backing tracks can be done well; after all, eight of the 12 tracks from B.o.B’s album “B.o.B Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray” have some sort of featured artist. And, I’ll have a chance to see if I like any of B.o.B’s other material (if I don’t look it up beforehand).

Posted by Alex Smith on Jan 27 2011. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.