Which Came First: The Shift in R&B or the Shift in Intimacy?
R&B has always sung about intimacy. The difference now is how plainly it says it.
Stock photo by Olena Ruban/Getty Images.
Since the term R&B was coined, it has been synonymous with love, lust, relationships — romantic, platonic, and unrequited — and of course intimacy. But the way intimacy has been expressed in R&B hasn’t stayed the same.
At first, desire was implied. Romance lived in metaphor, restraint and what Darius Lovehall called in 1997’s Love Jones “the possibility of the thing.” The Isley Brothers wanted to “sail away in mystery.” Luther Vandross swam in feelings “deep enough to swim in.” Whitney Houston saved all her love for someone she couldn’t have before turning that devotion inward. The Temptations, Charlie Wilson and Anita Baker — to name a few — gave listeners language for yearning without always naming it bluntly.
Intimacy wasn’t absent, but it was coded and covert. It was dressed in silk, wrapped in longing and delivered with an R&B quiver.
But even then, R&B was never entirely innocent. The line between romance and physical desire has always been thin. Silk was explicit about the meeting in their bedroom. SWV embraced the “rain” from a storm they didn’t need shelter from. Quincy Jones assembled a roster of suave crooners to guide listeners into a “Secret Garden.” Janet Jackson plainly asked, “Would You Mind?” Vulnerability and explicitness were already cohabitating — they were just living in rooms beside one another.
Over time, though, something shifted. As culture became more transparent — and conversations about agency, autonomy and sexuality became less coded — R&B’s language changed, too. The metaphors loosened their grip. The mystery began to fade. The longing that once carried sexual tension started sharing a space with direct communication.
By the time we reached the 2000s and 2010s, sex and romance appeared on parallel tracks rather than intertwined ones.
When Jhené Aiko sang on 2020’s “P*$$Y Fairy (OTW),” she wasn’t disguising intimacy behind imagery; she was naming it. The shock some listeners expressed wasn’t necessarily about the act — R&B had addressed that some time ago – but the removal of figurative language.
Victoria Monét’s “Moment” (2020), Usher’s “Do It to Me” (2004) and Roberta Flack’s “Feel Like Makin’ Love” (1975) all expressed desire across decades. The difference isn’t that one era was pure and another provocative. It’s that earlier records often nestled sex inside romance, while contemporary records sometimes isolate the two.
That separation actually reflects something much larger.
R&B wasn’t rooted in prudence. It was centered in honesty and vulnerability. And it may surprise you that the core has remained.
Artists like Alex Isley — daughter of Ernie Isley and niece of Ronald Isley — continue the tradition of subtlety, disguising lust in suggestion. Kehlani moves fluidly between sensual directness and soft vulnerability. Ella Mai channels devotion in the lineage of Destiny’s Child’s “Cater 2 U,” while Leon Thomas and Kenyon Dixon revive earnest longing — the kind that requires kneeling in the rain.
The evolution of R&B isn’t about decline or excess. It’s about how nuance is communicated.
Desire has always been there. The difference is how plainly it’s being stated.
So which came first — the shift in intimacy or the shift in music?
R&B has always mirrored the emotional climate around it. When romance was a mystery, the music was implied. As honesty around sex, agency and boundaries expanded, the music evolved with it.
Love and sex didn’t necessarily split, but the glue holding language together stopped sticking.
And through every iteration — metaphorical or explicit — R&B has continued to meet listeners exactly where they are.
Regardless, the conversation has never stopped.
