In 1992, the world was formally introduced to Mary J. Blige in her “Real Love” music video. The image of a young Black woman, rocking an oversized baseball jersey, a backwards cap, and singing over a boom bap beat was a fresh take for R&B. Produced by Cory Rooney and Mark Morales, the track sampled Audio Two's 1987 track "Top Billin.” Raised on her mother’s soul records — from Aretha Franklin, Roy Ayers and Chaka Khan — to her experience singing in a Pentecostal church, Blige brought a raw emotion to the hip-hop sound running New York’s youth culture. By the time her sophomore album My Life debuted 2 years later, she and collaborators like the late Chucky Thompson had pioneered “hip-hop soul.”
The story of R&B is one of constant exploration, evolution, and reinvention, and Mary’s lore is one of many examples. With every generation, a brand new offshoot of R&B arises, reflecting the social, technological and political experiences of singers at the moment. Since its roots as an amalgamation of African American melodic sounds — pop, jazz, gospel and Blues — R&B has taken many forms. These diverse offerings show a tradition of experimenting with rhythmic sounds and blues storytelling to resonate with fans' inner worlds: the late '90s “jiggy” era, Y2K pop, neo-soul, Crunk&B, trap soul and alternative R&B. However, with the many changes within rhythm and blues, has it lost its way, or is it true to its roots?
When speaking on the foundation of R&B, it's key to recall its emotional core in the Blues, which began in the Mississippi Delta among rural poor and working-class Black people using items they had to create instruments to sing their stories. Legendary musician Willie Dixon said in a 1995 interview with the African American Review, “The Blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and songs and inspirations with feeling and understanding.” Ethnomusicologist Daphne Duval Harrison’s book Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s detailed the Blues as the foundation for secular Black recorded music. Here, Harrison shared that early Blues singers covered numerous topics such as love, heartbreak, and injustice in an unfiltered way. Their performance styles laid the foundation for future singers, from Broadway, rock and roll, to R&B.
Artists throughout the '90s would modernize those Blues foundations their predecessors had set. Blige adapted New York street culture, swag, grit, and working-class Blues to R&B, creating a new subgenre. This image was a departure from polished adult contemporary powerhouse vocalists such as Anita Baker and Stephanie Mills.
Mary’s What’s the 411? Remix was the first R&B album to feature mostly rappers, from The Notorious B.I.G. on “What’s the 411?,” and “You Don’t Have to Worry” featuring Craig Mack. This showed a dedication to crafting R&B with heavy hip-hop influences. Sampling was the backbone of the golden era of hip-hop, and her sophomore album, My Life, mirrored this trend. Her single “Be Happy,” co-produced by Poke of Trackmasters, sampled 1979’s “You're So Good to Me” by Curtis Mayfield.
Mary helped set the precedent of hip-hop fusing with soul. In 1995, D’Angelo and Raphael Saddiq produced the late singer’s iconic serenade “Lady,” an early neo-soul innovation. Saddiq says they were inspired production-wise by the likes of Wu-Tang and A Tribe Called Quest, and later J Dilla. A year later, the Fugees' covered Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” over a beat that sampled the drums of A Tribe Called Quest’s “Bonita Applebum.”
By the late 1990s, there was a new shift in the sound courtesy of the jiggy era. This was a more dance-friendly segue between the smooth and gritty sounds of hip-hop and neo-soul, and the youthful Y2K R&B-pop era. Popularized by Bad Boy Records, it focused on the aspirational lifestyle of jewelry, designer clothes, luxury cars, and flashy club culture, offering an illusion of escapism from the street and hard-knock themes of hip-hop. R&B would adapt, employing more catchy hooks and infectious basslines while sampling funk and disco hits that easily crossed over into pop, such as Brandy’s “Top of the World” featuring Mase, and Blackstreet’s “No Diggity.”
Meanwhile, Timbaland's stuttering drums and Missy's soulful songwriting ushered in a futuristic, experimental appeal to R&B on Aaliyah’s “One in A Million” and Ginuwine’s “So Anxious.” This sound would influence the “trap soul” and alternative R&B artists throughout the 2010s. Then there were Gospel-influenced ballads like Dru Hill’s “These Are The Times” and K-Ci & JoJo’s “All My Life” as the '90s came to an end, proving that R&B could be club-friendly, emotional, and commercially successful all at once.
Southern club culture would begin to take over popular music in the 2000s. The emergence of “Crunk&B” was the smoother counterpart to Atlanta’s riotous rap jams. Ciara’s “Oh,” Usher’s “Yeah,” and Cherish’s “Do It to It” were iconic 106 & Park-friendly benchmarks. The introduction of auto-tune would — for better or worse — expand the sonic possibilities for artists who would begin to explore more melodic sensibilities in rap. T-Pain’s “I’m Sprung” in 2005 and Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop” in 2008 were both Billboard Hot 100 mainstays and club staples. By the time Drake released “Best I Ever Had” in 2009, where he both raps and sings throughout, it was commonplace for rappers to do both. But if rappers could sing their own hooks and fans embraced it, where did that leave R&B artists?
By the early 2010s, R&B artists would dip their toes into electronic dance music, or EDM. Artists like Kelly Rowland, Usher, and Ne-Yo, who rode the highs of the ‘90s and ‘00s, found new pathways in these euro-pop sonics. Meanwhile, Dijon McFarlane, better known as DJ Mustard, was spearheading his own movement , with a resurgent and signature West Coast minimalist and bass-heavy “ratchet music” sound for Tinashe and Ty Dolla $ign to Jeremih and Rihanna. These tracks leaned heavily into catchy hooks and demonstrated another experimental path for R&B. In semi-contrast, the appeal of rapper-centered melodic records like Future’s “Turn on the Lights” (2x Platinum), Kirko Bangz’s “Drank in My Cup” (Platinum), and Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen” (Diamond) could not be ignored as well.
As the decade progressed, a younger generation of R&B fans seeking more than monoculture discovered a new wave of artists emerging online, building their lore through blogs, Tumblr, Soundcloud, Vine and YouTube. These artists used mixtapes, covers, and viral content to get their voices out there, which turned into record deals for some. For women, Jhené Aiko brought chillout, ethereal vocals into hip-hop soul, while SZA blended synths, trap and reverb for a “glitter trap sound.” Tinashe’s early style was defined by similar alt-pop and soul. Frank Ocean’s Nostalgia, Ultra (2011) and Miguel’s Kaleidoscope Dream (2012) are essential projects blending rock, R&B and hip-hop. The Weeknd, PARTYNEXTDOOR and later Bryson Tiller experimented with darker, atmospheric sounds, samples, combining trap and electronic elements with lyrics that were more direct than subtle.
By building an online fan base, many artists bypassed the checkpoints that their predecessors of the ‘90s and ‘00s had to navigate in the music industry, which often placed them in rigid sonic boxes. In the same way Black artists of the early Blues deviated from the white, polished, romance-centered radio tunes of the 1920s, the alternative R&B crowd broke rules in song structure, sonic and vocal production, and subject matter for their time.
While this emerging era was defined by experimentation, traditional soul simply adapted and evolved. Throughout the 2010s, contemporary soul albums like Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah Part Two, D’Angelo’s Black Messiah, Jazmine Sullivan’s Reality Show, Anderson Paak’s Malibu, Solange's A Seat at the Table, BJ The Chicago Kid’s In My Mind, Bilal’s A Love Surreal, and Ledisi’s Pieces of You were released. As promotional opportunities shifted, independent digital media became a critical space for R&B and soul, offering new platforms for fans to discover the music that mainstream channels no longer highlighted.
Today, R&B has continued to shift toward a global presence of artists crafting a unique style that makes sense to them. Those desiring a mix of nostalgia and modern sounds can play Summer Walker. Want to feel '90s and 2000s-style nostalgia? Cue up Kehlani or Elmiene. Leon Thomas is bringing funk and rock. If you want electronic fusion, press play on Rochelle Jordan. If Afro-soul is your thing, listen to Odeal.
What ties modern R&B together is the singing of the blues, defined by Willie Dixon as “the facts of life,” which remains the core reason why people keep returning to this music — the comfort and cathartic experience of hearing their truth soulfully expounded in song, no matter the beat. The idea of a narrow selection of acceptable sounds no longer applies today. Does that mean R&B is lost? No, it simply means R&B just can’t be contained, and its influence is everywhere now. It is continuously expanding into new possibilities, as it has since the beginning.
