Archive for January 9th, 2012

EXCLUSIVE: Ne-Yo, Rihanna Producer Says Industry Killed R&B, Talks Creating Divas

Grammy Award winning producer-songwriter Chuck Harmony is well known in the music industry for making hits for artists like Ne-Yo, Chrisette Michele, Rihanna, Mary J. Blige, Fantasia, amongst many others. But unlike so many people in music, Harmony is not just in it for the money; he has a special love for the genre that made him rich; Ramp;B.

With that being said, the hitmaker has one goal and thats reintroducing the swag back to rhythm and blues, insisting the industry was the reason for the commercial slip of the once popular genre.

?We did it to ourselves, we let the genre die,? Harmony tells Singersroom exclusively. ?What happen was so many of our talented people stepped on the Pop train and they forsaken their own music. We all just jumped on the Pop train because we thought that was winning. It was winning but I think we owe it to ourselves and to a genre we actually created to keep it moving.?

He continues: ?We have not had a lot of ambassadors for Ramp;B. Like Kanye [West] and Jay-Z, all them guys are ambassadors for rap. Drake is the new generation and Nicki Minaj is the new generation of rap. We dont have that in Ramp;B.?

Harmony insists music is now more about the lifestyle and not about the artistry, which prevents the creation of divas.

?Its even less about the song and more about the lifestyle. We got to a point where it is not cool to be an Ramp;B singer. It is not cool to listen to it. It?s cool to listen to Lil Wayne; that is some stuff we have to bring back to the table; the artistry and lifestyle,? says Harmony.

He adds: ?I believe as it relates to a female artist, we have to bring the diva back. You remember when Mariah Carey was diva, Whitney Houston was a diva, Toni Braxton was a diva, like people wanted to be them. Now people go to BB and Aldo and get styled up and they look like anybody else walking down the street. Nobody wants to be that. I feel like we have to bring that back, that whole persona to black music.?

Harmony is planning to sign and release young talented acts who will become Ramp;B ambassadors that fans from all genres will view as icons.

?You damn right, anything that comes from my studio I believe in it,? Harmony states about fighting for his genre of love. ?I will put it out myself. That is why we make money. The difference between people today and the moguls back in the day; Master P and the Puff Daddy and all them were not scared to spend their own money to put sh*t out themselves or get themselves hot and have the record label come.?

Read more of our sit down with Chuck Harmony.

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Alcohol Abuse: Is Binge Drinking Impacted By Romantic Relationships?

Who you date could influence how you drink, according to a new study from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.

The study followed the drinking habits of 208 unmarried, heterosexual couples in their 20s (at least one partner in each relationship was in college) over a 28-day period. In all cases, the couples had been dating for at least three months and saw each other a minimum of five days a week. Researchers found they could predict a partners binge drinking based on the binge drinking patterns of their partner.

Unlike previous studies, this one found that it wasnt just men influencing women to drink more: Binge drinking in university students occurs in both young men and women. Studies with married couples show that men have more of an influence on women, but in our study, we found both young women and young men influence their partner’s binge drinking, wrote researcher Aislin Mushquash in a press release.

This study is part of a growing body of research showing that more women are drinking to excess. According to a new study by Shelly Greenfield, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, there were five males dependent on alcohol for every female alcoholic in the 1980s, though by 2002 the gap had been drastically reduced to 2.5 men for every woman.

One problem with women closing the binge drinking gender gap is that their bodies dont process alcohol like a mans. Another study published earlier this year found that while alcohol puts both men and woman at risk for diseases like cirrhosis, alcohol poising and cancer, Women become intoxicated after drinking half as much, metabolize alcohol differently, develop cirrhosis of the liver more rapidly, and have a greater risk of dying from alcohol-related accidents, according to Women And Alcohol Use Disorders, an article in the July-August 2002 issue of the Harvard Review of Psychiatry.

Alcohol abuse also damages womens brains more quickly than it does mens. A study to be published in January 2012 found that women who had been drinking to excess for four years had patterns of reduced serotonin activity in their brains similar to the patterns exhibited in men who had been abusing alcohol for 14 years.

To top off the grim statistics, women who binge drink are at a higher risk of being the victims of violence: Alcohol consumption is involved in two out of three incidents of intimate partner violence, according to the centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Gawkers Lauri Apple points out that the binge drinking study from Dalhousie University leaves out large portions of the population, studying only unmarried college students, and binge drinking is often seen as more normalized college behavior.

The study also does not take into account the influence of friends on drinking habits — if a couple is going to the same weekend parties, for example, who is to say that its the partner, and not the larger social circle, behind the binge drinking?

Do you think your partner influences how much you drink? Share your thoughts in the comments below.