R&B Music Became Everyone’s Favorite Genre Without You Noticing
From the British Invasion to Motown to disco, every few years seems to usher in a new sound. In my lifetime alone, I’ve heard new wave, pop, hair metal, grunge, backpack rap, gangsta rap, jam bands, boy bands, alt rock, trap rap, indie and EDM hit mainstream with acts like The Eurythmics, Madonna, Guns’N’Roses, Nirvana, A Tribe Called Quest, Tupac, Dave Matthews Band, Backstreet Boys, Matchbox 20, Rick Ross, Phoenix and Skrillex become household names and festival headliners.
But move over Future, Grizzly Bear and Deadmau5 because everyone’s new favorite genre is R&B, even if they haven’t yet admitted it to themselves. The Weeknd did some festival gigs last year and while names like Bryson Tiller, Kehlani, Hiatus Kaiyote, Rhye, and Leon Bridges don’t headline this year’s Lollapalooza and Coachella, their presence further validates that less pop-infused versions of the R&B genre are beginning to take root nationally.
My oldest brother Kahron, who writes about music and other things for the Austin Chronicle and other outlets, has probably the best taste in music out of anyone I know. But even he is hesitant to realize the truth in R&B’s push to the top of genre preference. He hears the pop sounds of The Weeknd and Beyonce and doesn’t think it’s a sign of R&B’s strength. He sees rappers like Drake and Childish Gambino singing and credits it more to the degradation of musicianship and instruments than the evolution of R&B. But he’s wrong.
In the last two years, R&B has become everyone’s favorite musical genre, and it’s done so without many of us — music critics and appreciators especially — noticing because it counters the story many of them tell themselves which is that today’s music is significantly worse than the music of yesteryear (in essence, the music of our youth is better than the music of our adulthood). Everyone starts saying the same thing when they turn 35, but R&B music today proves they may not have a concert leg to stand on. Sure, plenty of R&B crooners lack songwriting pedigree or instrumentation, but notable bands like The Internet prove fans are eager for a sound that blends the musical skill of years past with the new-age vibes of Soulection.
Case in point, one new artist best positioned to capture America’s attention in the coming year is a guy named Anderson .Paak (pictured left). He stands on the shoulders of folks like Dr. Dre, Lenny Kravitz, Kendrick Lamar and Frank Ocean and delivers a new form of R&B not seen since the days of Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind & Fire. It’s soulful, it’s groovy, and it’s led by an instrument-playing singer-songwriter. After seeing him twice and hearing him twice more (from outside the venues) during SXSW two weeks ago, I am convinced that his unique blend of showmanship and musicianship is going to take him from relative unknown to Coachella headliner in far less time than it took Kanye West, LCD Soundsystem or Calvin Harris. Is Anderson .Paak some talented R&B crooner riding the legacy of more talented songwriters like R. Kelly and D’Angelo and rap-singing about doing women wrong? I don’t think so.
Thinking back over the past 50 years, I know R&B has always had a certain degree of mainstream success from Motown acts like Smokey Robinson and soulful singers like Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye to pop icons like Michael Jackson, Prince, Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. I know there have been plenty of R&B legends over the years like producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis and Luther Vandross in the ’80s, Teddy Riley with New Jack Swing then R. Kelly and Boyz II Men in the ’90s, and hitmakers Rodney Jerkins, Jermaine Dupri and Usher on into the ’00s. But outside the occasional album from Erykah Badu or D’Angelo in the last decade or the Grammy-winning material from the likes of Jill Scott and John Legend, R&B — at least the kind that is still dominated by Black voices — has mostly taken a backseat from a genre-preference standpoint in the mainstream to some form of rock (be it grunge or indie), pop (be it boy bands or ballads by British singers like Adele, Sam Smith and the late Amy Winehouse) and, more recently, country (even Black artists are topping charts now even after Taylor Swift ditched Nashville) and rap (thanks to Jay-Z and Kanye, and Drake and Kendrick Lamar, more recently).
But there are five key people who’ve turned the tide and pushed R&B to the forefront of musical taste buds circa 2015.
Lauryn Hill: Fundamentally, Lauryn Hill is the person who started the trend with her classic debut, “The Misseducation of Lauryn Hill” which broke all kinds of barriers for expectations for a Black female musician. She rapped smart lyrics. She sang beautiful songs. She played the guitar when she wanted. She just didn’t like the fame. That’s OK, she created a lane for other artists to follow her lead, particularly those in hip-hop, which broke into the mainstream in the late ’80s thanks to pop rappers like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice but went legitimately mainstream with the classic debuts of artists like Notorious B.I.G. and Snoop Doggy Dogg in the mid-90s.
One of the people who saw that lane and widened it was Pharrell Williams. Pharrell, obviously, stood on the shoulders of fellow Virginia native and producer, Timbaland, early on as Timbo’s earlier work with artists like Aaliyah, Ginuwine and Missy Elliot, paved the way for The Neptunes sound Pharrell created with former classmate Chad Hugo. But specifically it was Pharrell’s production mix, which had him cutting pop R&B tracks like “Slave” for Britney Spears and “Girlfriend” for N*Sync and rap-sung tracks like “Excuse Me Miss” for Jay-Z that pushed R&B to the next level of consciousness even has actual R&B artists like Usher Raymond burst into the mainstream with his diamond-selling album Confessions followed by Justin Timberlake with “Justified”. Between Pharrell and Timbo, these guys didn’t just help Jay-Z reach the stratophere; these guys helped bring R&B to new heights entirely.
For the Drake fans in need of a history lesson, there were two albums that pre-dated Drake’s rise to the top. 1) “The Love Below” by Andre 3000 and 2) “808s and Heartbreaks” by Kanye West. Without these two albums, there would be no Drake. Period. He would be viewed as too soft, not gangsta enough, too emotional, way too much of an LL Cool J / Ja Rule clone. Instead, we rap along to every Drake lyric whether we’re at a wedding or Coachella. [Note: Yes, LL and Ja both had popular R&B-styled rap songs, but their inability to retain their rap credibility after the fact is what diminishes their role in the long-term evolution of R&B. Maybe they were just ahead of their time. Or maybe they should’ve kept their shirts on in the videos.]
So after you credit Lauryn Hill, Timbo, Pharrell, Andre 3000 and Kanye West and, to a lesser extent, folks like LL Cool J, Ja Rule, and Jay-Z, for the rise of R&B, what you’re left with is one very very obvious fact.
R&B is a female-led genre. And so long as Beyonce and Rihanna are arena-level acts able to sellout shows at the same places The Rolling Stones and Taylor Swift perform at and, more or less, outsell their Black music counterparts like Jay-Z and Drake, R&B will continue its current status as the most preferred and infused genre in music today.
Simply put, R&B is about voices and personalities. From Aretha and Tina Turner to Chaka Khan and Sade to Erykah Badu and Jill Scott, R&B has been littered with some sensational, distinct and charismatic voices and personalities. That’s why it should come as no surprise that there’s so much diversity in what constitutes R&B today. The diversity is rooted in R&B’s history of musicianship and songwriting that gave us both one-man and full-band sensations like Stevie Wonder and Earth Wind & Fire along with Grammy nominated neo-soul favorites like D’Angelo and Erykah Badu.
Think about this: Taylor Swift ditched country to make songs like “Blank Space” which have clear R&B and hip-hop influences. Adele is British crooner who has taken up the mantle from American predecessors like Mariah Carey and Cristina Aguilera and fellow Brit Amy Winehouse, who each exhibited the kind of star power and R&B singing chops that made them regulars with New York rappers ranging from Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Redman to Nas. Singers from Down Under be it Lorde or Kimbra are evidence that the tentacles of American R&B, Black music at its core, are far reaching. Rappers like Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole routinely do songs with singers like Sza and Jhenè Aiko and some rappers have taken to singing themselves (e.g. Drake, Childish Gambino). Emerging artists like Vic Mensa, Allan Kingdom and Chance the Rapper have singing chops from mimicking R&B greats if not from church like many of the Black women and men who popularized the genre in past decades.
Even movie soundtracks ranging from the Rocky reboot “Creed” which cast the actress Tessa Thompson as an FKA Twigs-meets-Kelela songstress to the Oscar-winning “Glory” off the “Selma” soundtrack have R&B reaching still further into American earbuds and music-sharing streaming services. Speaking of streaming, artist collectives like Soulelection and producers, music directors and songwriters like Dev Hynes, Terrace Martin, Kuk Harrell, Babe Brice, Kaytranada, Sounwave, Tokimonsta and James Fauntleroy are lesser known names you’d only see if you read liner notes or follow on Soundcloud. Kehlani, Snarky Puppy, Kali Uchis, Anna Wise, Hundred Waters, Solange, James Blake, Jamie Woon, Kacy Hill, Denetia and Sene…these are people you may not know a single song from, but their influence is impacting that musical choices of more mainstream artists today.
BJ, The Chicago Kid and Vince Staples, Raury and other up-and-coming rappers have significant R&B influences in their music as do well-known rappers like Big Sean (“Play No Games”) and Meek Mill (“All Eyes on You”), who both placed R&B-inspired tracks on their latest albums.
Obviously, The Weeknd and Frank Ocean are people who’ve gone past R&B and are now names that casual pop music fans know thanks to their Grammy-nominated albums and televised performances, but Miguel, The-Dream and Janelle Monae are surprisingly still relatively unknown outside of the tastemaker and fans of sites like Pitchfork or Pigeons and Planes.
Artists like Tame Impala are having their songs covered by Rihanna (“New Person, Same Old Mistakes” while festival favorites like CHVRCHES (“Leave a Trace”) and Phantogram (“Fall in Love”) have popular songs that infuse R&B with electronic, rock and pop to great effect. Electronic artists like Disclosure, SBTRKT, Hudson Mohawke and Jamie xx have each made R&B a key element in their latest albums leveraging the talents of artists like Jessie Ware, Sampha, Miguel and Romy.
Chris Brown and Trey Songz are well-known for their music by R&B fans, but it wasn’t until I saw Bryson Tiller at Nokia Live at the Staples Center in LA this New Year’s Eve, that I saw how significant their impact had been. Nearly every woman in the crowd was singing along to Tiller’s tracks, not just his underground hit “Don’t”.
A more classic form of R&B — the blues-heavy version— has even caught on lately with Gary Clark, Jr., a virtuoso on the guitar in the vein of Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Leon Bridges, a fellow Texan who bring a young approach to an old-school style made popular by Sam Cooke decades ago.
Some of NPR’s most popular Tiny Desk Concerts have been with artists who have amazing R&B-equipped voices like Banks and Jessie Ware, not to mention the viral video which validated that T-Pain can do a whole lot more than use Autotune.
I could go on and on…moral of the story is R&B is here, it’s the musical genre most in charge of what we like today, be it T.Swift or FlyLo, and we have a lot of people to thank beginning with the folks listed above.
WHAT’S NEXT?
If you’re too impatient to find out what’s next, familiarize yourself with names like Robert Glasper, Karriem Riggins, Flying Lotus and Thundercat. With biopics on Miles Davis (played by Don Cheadle) and Chet Baker (played by Ethan Hawke) forthcoming, the jazz age is on the upswing. Kamasi Washington is playing Coachella, and no one would have called that a few years ago.
