Ke3 said: "BrodyFosse123 said: "I blame AMERICAN IDOL for giving this riffing nonsense a platform and giving birth to young singers believing this creative choice was the true definition of singing talent. It was hilarious the amount of YouTube artists that surfaced where every single lyric was riffed. Shoshana Bean and Jennifer Hudson are the only artists to master this where it isn’t a distraction. Jessica Vosk seems to have a career due to her crowd-pleasing riffing as her voice is a generic singing voice. Today’s audiences are post-AMERICAN IDOL, so they’re from the era where riffing equates to amazing singing. No, it camouflages weakness. When you get to a difficult spot vocally, you riff."
This is perhaps the most white thing i’ve ever read. Riffing has nothing to do with camouflaging vocal weakness just because that’s how a few white girls who went to Michigan use it. Riffing (and runs) both come from Black musical styles and there’s no shortage of strong vocalists who use it"
Seems to me that both things can be true. As you say, the practice stems from Black culture, and like with most Black music, it's been appropriated by white people to become a pillar in mainstream pop music (which of course bleeds into musical theatre). And I think where BrodyFosse's point comes in, is that in the appropriation process, it has become a crutch for many (non-Black) performers who have come to use it as a stylistic and technical crutch.
Maybe BrodyFosse should've made that distinction, but I think the trends they're pointing out are very real, in the broader context in which the practice has become "popularized" (/appropriated). In fact it makes perfect sense when you think about it through that lens: of course the people who are just doing it because it's "in vogue" won't use the tool as effectively as the performers whose musical background is more rooted in the tradition from which the practice comes.
