My exposure to RnB is purposefully limited. I find it tedious and generic. Innovation quickly becomes the norm, and re-inventions are more marketing hype than genuine rebirth. RnB does, of course, have a relationship with rap music, and artists of both genres end up blurring the border. But I can live with this. What I cannot handle is the obsession with collaborations. Put simply, if collaborations are a necessity or an expectation, then they reflect on the artist as being someone who has little to say, or perhaps doesn’t have enough talent to carry a song or an album. The other purpose is to get validation through association, both within their artistic peer group and with their fans. It’s amateur, juvenile and stupid.

You might think that’s the main beef I have with RnB. It’s not. Taking second place is the number of tracks on an album. Gone are the days of 9 or 10 tracks on an album. If you have 18 tracks on your album, you’re nothing. Some artists even stretch themselves to double albums to fit in these essential collaborations. Then there’s the biggest mistake: interludes.

Pitchfork rightly points this out in today’s review of Ciara’s The Evolution: “Ciara’s spoken-word interludes are her own conceit, an assumption that we need her to tell us who she is.”

That’s what the songs should be for.