I arrived in New York City in August 1996, a freshman at NYU, a poet, and a lover of music. I couldn’t have had better timing. The late ’90s were humming with a new kind of frequency — one that pulsed through Tower Records on Broadway, where I stood in line with friends for Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite meet-and-greet. My coming-of-age had been shaped by classic projects from Dr. Dre, Tupac, Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Outkast, and Wu-Tang Clan, but A Tribe Called Quest’s Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders albums had lifted me through teenage storms while gifting me an appreciation for jazz samples — priming me for the rise of a new crop of artists who shared that same love for ATCQ and whose projects leaned heavily on live instrumentation, hip-hop influences, and conscious expression. The subgenre was dubbed “Neo-Soul” by a savvy music entrepreneur named Kedar Massenburg, and like the first single from an artist he’d signed named Erykah Badu, the wave would go on and on.
When Brown Sugar dropped, D’Angelo’s church-bred vocals rode basslines that felt both vintage and new, anchored in live instrumentation that echoed the grooves of Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye. Nearly 30 years later, D’Angelo’s influence remains profound. He delivered three timeless projects, but his 1995 debut ushered in a seismic shift to R&B. This was an era when we spent hours watching music videos on BET after school, and D’Angelo’s videos often found him singing from behind the keys (or in the case of “Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine,” playing all the instruments) in smoky nightclubs. He set the stage for my college experience, where my days were spent in lecture halls and my nights at venues like Tramps, S.O.B.’s, and Wetlands — rooms where I witnessed music history being made.
A year later, Badu’s Baduizm turned incense smoke and headwraps into sacred symbols, calling in an era where vulnerability and mysticism could live inside the same melody. Her lyrics carried real-time revolution: traces of the Nation of Gods and Earths, nods to Five Percenter mathematics, and the idea of Black divinity woven between bars about love and self-knowledge. I didn’t know the word “synchronicity” back then, but I was living it. In my humanities class, we studied Socrates’ central philosophy from Plato’s Apology — “I know that I know nothing” — and I vividly recall instantly connecting how Badu’s "On & On” lyrics, “The man that knows something knows that he knows nothing at all,“ echoed that ancient truth. While critics spoke of timelessness, it was clear to me that Badu was building a bridge between the ancestral and the avant-garde.
What made this music feel progressive was its wholeness — full of Blackness, womanhood, spirituality, natural hair, and everyday freedom. I remember that freedom personally: strangers stopping me on the street to compliment my curly ‘fro, forging a confidence I felt reflected in the artists I embraced — and who I felt embracing me back. The music made space for that — for us to take up space, for our texture, our thoughts, our contradictions. These new voices were in conversation with another movement happening right beside them — the rise of progressive hip-hop. Common, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and The Roots were making records that felt like spiritual cousins to Brown Sugar and Baduizm. They traded hooks and verses, performed together, and blurred the lines between cipher and sermon.
Of course, this sound didn’t come from nowhere. It’s impossible to pinpoint the precise origins of neo-soul, but Tony! Toni! Toné! laid the groundwork in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Raphael Saadiq, his brother D’Wayne Wiggins, and cousin Timothy Christian Riley blended live funk with soul tradition long before the term existed. Me’Shell Ndegeocello did the same with her bass — bending gender and genre in songs that were as political as they were sensual. Even Organized Noize, the Atlanta collective behind OutKast and Goodie Mob, shared in that collective consciousness that fed us fat beats seasoned with live rhythms — poetry blended with song, rock, gospel, jazz, and funk that defied the flossier commercial trends of that era. These artists and producers living out the “neo-soul” ethos simultaneously honored the ancestors while pushing the culture forward. They believed, as so many of us did then, that Black music could be both sacred and sexy, that intellect and intuition could share a stage.
Guided by D’Angelo to record at “the house that Jimi built,” Electric Lady Studios became the setting of a kind of renaissance camp for Black artistry — a gathering of minds obsessed with sound, ancestry, and freedom. D’Angelo and Badu had already proven the appetite for something deeper, and as they began work on their second albums, a constellation of kindred spirits began orbiting around them: Questlove, James Poyser, J Dilla, Common, Bilal, and others who would become known as the Soulquarians.
What stands out most about these creators is how they managed to stand in the doorway of the past and the future. The music referenced multiple genres — it was ancestral yet futuristic. In those early sessions, they were playing with time, bending the groove like a Dilla drum swing. They studied Soul Train reruns and Prince concert footage like scripture but also dove into the sonic rebellion of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, testing how far soul could stretch before it snapped. Inside Electric Lady, competition and communion lived side by side, with Questlove and Dilla migrating between sessions with D’Angelo in one room and Bilal, Common, Mos Def, or Talib Kweli in others. Everyone tried to outdo each other while building something collective — proof that rivalry could coexist with reverence. From that magical time came classic projects from Mos (1999’s Black on Both Sides), The Roots (1999’s Things Fall Apart), Common (2000’s Like Water for Chocolate), D’Angelo (2000’s Voodoo), Erykah (2000’s Mama’s Gun), Bilal (2001’s 1st Born Second), and Talib (2002’s Quality).
The famed Electric Lady Studios sat on 8th Street, right around the corner from the dining hall where I ate every day my freshman year. I’d pass the record stores, head to class, never realizing that behind those unmarked doors, my favorite artists were reshaping the soul of Black music.
After debuting at No. 1, Voodoo spent 33 weeks on the Billboard 200 and earned D’Angelo the Grammy for Best R&B Album, while “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” garnered him Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. It was only right. While his debut had paid direct homage to the '70s soul singers who preceded him, Voodoo showcased a new level of musicianship — a sound that was truly all his own. The music was raw, yet holy, a suite of no-skip songs that captured the heart of Black southern culture while channeling something divine and diasporic. And the visuals! The video for “Untitled” left lustful fans wanting more, but D’Angelo refused to give it to them. Rejecting objectification, he disappeared from the spotlight altogether — until his return nearly 15 years later with 2014’s Black Messiah as D’Angelo and the Vanguard.
By the time I graduated from NYU, neo-soul was no longer lingering in the shadows of commercial R&B — it was a formidable force. Lauryn Hill’s 1998 singular opus, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, earned her ten Grammy nominations at the 41st Grammy Awards and five wins, including Best New Artist, Best R&B Album, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, Best R&B Song (“Doo Wop (That Thing)”), and the coveted Album of the Year. Jill Scott gained recognition after penning the hook (that Badu sang) on The Roots’ Grammy-winning single “You Got Me,” and her pivotal Who Is Jill Scott?: Words and Sounds, Vol. 1 was among the wave of strong releases that year. Angie Stone, who also contributed to Voodoo, released Black Diamond in 1999. Groove Theory’s Amel Larrieux dropped her debut, Infinite Possibilities, in 2000. Musiq Soulchild’s Aijuswanaseing arrived the same year. International acts like France’s Les Nubians (1998’s Princesses Nubiennes) and England’s Floetry (2002’s Floetic) were also embraced by neo-soul audiences. And the list goes on. Cases can be made that artists, including Dwele, Raheem DeVaughn, Kindred the Family Soul, Eric Benet, Van Hunt, Donnell Jones, Glenn Lewis, Tweet, and many others made impactful contributions to neo-soul.
In interviews, Questlove has said that the 2004 taping of Dave Chappelle’s Block Party documentary marked the end of the Soulquarian era. I was there that day too, standing in that Brooklyn crowd in the rain for that legendary show where everyone from Freeway to Kanye West, Common, Jill Scott and Erykah Badu all shared a stage. I don’t think it was an ending so much as a handoff. There were so many common chords that crossed that day — Adam Blackstone joining the band for some sets, John Legend, who played keys on Lauryn’s Miseducation album, stepping into his solo career. The spirit of collaboration was alive, already birthing the next generation.
“Neo-soul” was a made-up name meant to market a group of artists who never wanted to be boxed in, so it seems strange to draw a line where it ended. Just as the genre defied definition, the sonic feeling that was created continues to evolve. While some see it as a movement that spanned the early ’90s to the late aughts, others recognize its living lineage. You can hear its echoes in Solange’s A Seat at the Table, Frank Ocean’s Blonde, Thundercat’s Drunk, and SZA’s Ctrl. It pulses through the horns of Kamasi Washington and Terrace Martin, the guitars of H.E.R. and Steve Lacy, and the percussive joy of Anderson .Paak. These artists are the heirs of the Soulquarian spirit — musicians who treat genre like clay, bending it toward joy. They’ve taken the blueprint and made it boundless.
Nearly three decades later, neo-soul’s legacy is still expanding. The artists who came after have turned introspection into innovation, carrying the sound forward with their own fearless honesty. Because soul — no matter the prefix — has always been about evolution, about staying rooted while reaching higher. The rhythm continues, and the next verse is still being written.
