A little-discussed truism of R&B is that female vocalists benefited more from Michael Jackson than male vocalists did, and none more than Karyn White. Only gays and black teenage girls seemed to appreciate White's potential as a revolutionary force in black dance music, someone whose natural gift for melody and a rocker's instincts pushed the mediocre material that characterized late '80s R&B over the top.
White was washed out to sea in the Whitney-Mariah tidal wave that swept through the business in the early '90s, her nervous, totally human vocal gymnastics replaced by a faux gospel passion. Beyonce Knowles, the lead singer and kingpin of Destiny's Child, is closer to White in terms of musical sensibility than any other big-name singer now shaking her scantily clad rump on MTV. But even if she was influenced artistically by White as a child, she grew up in an industry atmosphere that favored the big effect over all other considerations.
The skinny on the street is that the new DC album, "Survivor," is inferior to the last platinum blockbuster, "The Writing's on the Wall," mainly because Beyonce has unleashed her inner control freak (a year ago, two members were replaced, and then one of those replacements quit four months later). On the other hand, the skinny in my apartment is that the first three cuts on the new album have been playing pretty much nonstop for the past two months.