Seeing is believing

Learning to love Babyface.

By Tony Green

AFTER LISTENING CLOSELY to my wife, the pastor at my church, and the basset hound-looking brother lounging outside Rudy's Rib Shack last Friday night, something became clearer to me than ever before: there's more to the idea of owning "nice stuff" than just the stuff itself. Which in turn made me understand better why nearly every black person over the age of 30 in my part of Pinellas County, Fla., loves Babyface.

An acquaintance of mine, Spin magazine editor-in-chief Alan Light, once described contemporary R&B as "the least respected form of music out there." In many critical circles, this is true. Despite the fact that every generation or so somebody comes along who is "ruining" the music, to me R&B has a kind of self-regenerating virginity. In high school, one of my classmates claimed that Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes were killing R&B by making people think disco was R&B. The '80s version of the story was that anybody using a drum machine was accomplishing the same feat – which seems odd, when you look back at the work of, say, Levert. And in the '90s, Babyface – a phenomenally successful singer-songwriter-producer with credits from TLC to Toni Braxton – was the problem.

After listening to the recent reissues on Epic/Legend of four Babyface albums, the complaining seems as quaintly misinformed as that of past decades. And I know why. More important, I see why.

There is a lot of building and renovation underway where I live. In the all-black area to the west, where my wife's family lives, the county is putting up new buildings and paving roads that were formerly dirt. Residents are being offered the opportunity to own upgraded, affordable homes. The white neighborhoods to either side are objecting, saying that the houses are being built too high – potentially allowing residents of the newly upgraded homes to look into the white residents' windows. In the integrated but still largely white subdivision where my wife and I live, some white residents are protesting the construction of an athletic facility on a strip of land a block to the west.

The assistant pastor spoke of how we need to go to the various area meetings and speak up for "our kids and our community." My wife and the basset hound brother, on the other hand, feel that the seemingly bizarre concerns are beyond logical discussion. "White folks just can't stand to see us with nice stuff," my wife says.

Which, of course, brings me back to Babyface. I have to admit that it took me a while before I could allow myself to like him. When I moved down South, full of talented tenth-ish arguments about the state of black musical appreciation ("Why is it that more black people know who Guy is than John Coltrane?"), I was fond of casting Babyface's immaculately crafted soul pop as nothing less than a pox on modern black music. Where was the struggle? The messages of uplift? The authenticity of the blues, the immediacy of the funk?

"Whip Appeal"? "I Love You Babe"? Nothing but well-tailored, corporate negro/Essence magazine/bourgie conformism. Interesting, but lightweight, serving no purpose other than the satisfaction of ephemeral pleasures, indicative of the emptiness of a black consumer culture that sacrificed meaningful concerns in the pursuit of "nice stuff."

Looking back, I realize that if I hadn't once held these beliefs, I would never know today how half-baked a lot of them are. And I wouldn't know what to say when people ask me why I've been fiending for Epic's Babyface reissues since I first heard they were coming out late last year. I have realized that in this place, in this time, at the dawn of the Dubya era, it's damn hard to begrudge a black man, woman, or child the desire to have something nice.

I admit I should have understood this from the beginning. My in-laws lived the life of working-class black people in the Deep South in the middle of the century, eventually saving enough money to send three kids to college (without loans, no less), build a house, and have enough left over to modestly enjoy themselves. I'd have a hard time telling them that their immaculately arranged furniture, big-screen television and tank-size SUV (which I am warned by my wife not even to brush into when her pop is watching) is representative of a disconnect from their blackness. I mean, I guess somebody could; it just wouldn't be me. Before anyone got a chance to hear what I had to say, I'd get an earful from my wife.

She'd say that having nice stuff isn't always about flossing or shining or materialism or ego or competition, at least not from her point of view. That, more often than you think, it's about having nice stuff "because of," "in spite of." That her desire to upgrade her slovenly husband's appearance is "because of" the fact that being déclassé signifies aloofness only if you're white. She'd tell you that her parents have their cars, TV, and furniture "in spite of" the fact that they lived most of their adult lives as second-class citizens. That her desire for a nice car stems from the fact that within the framework of what's possible, it's the most effective way for her to tell the folks bitching about the athletic facility, the community upgrades, and about "too many of them" employed where she works, to kiss her ass. And, most important, that even if she didn't have to deal with all that bullshit, even if she lived in the idealized, race-neutral society some mealymouthed public figures insist is a fully realized fact, that she and her family would still like nice stuff just because there is no good reason for them not to.

Which isn't to say that "Everytime I Close My Eyes" is a call to arms. Or politically significant, aesthetically adventurous, a slap in the face of white America, or anything else. And it doesn't mean that my wife, in-laws, and extended family and friends listen to nothing but pop R&B tunes – their tastes run all over the place. It's just that they don't see any good reason not to like music that is nothing more or less than what it says it is: hook-heavy, eminently hummable, shamelessly enjoyable pop music. Love songs, ballads, new jack swing-immaculate dance tunes, with obsessive attention to detail, form, song craft, and sweetening texture. And if you have to ask why Babyface's music exists in such a grit-free environment, you probably don't understand the point of my mother-in-law's living room or my late grandmother's old show table. And you definitely don't understand why my electrician father-in-law likes Herb Alpert as much as he likes Buddy Guy. Or why to folks where I live, and to a lot of other people like them, hearing nice stuff is often the next best thing to having it.

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