Gambino and Monae make R&B new again

Soulful singing

R&B has been riding a roller coaster over the past few decades, swooping from its commercial and aesthetic peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s to a low point around 10 years ago, when it was little more than a melodic appendage to rap’s rhythms and rhymes. What was once a cultural signpost – a sound that helped define black life, love, culture and protest – had become a sidebar due to the preeminence of hiphop.

But thanks to hip-hop’s dominance on the radio, a cross-fertilization has taken place and the genre has found renewed life by mixing with both rap and alternative music, vaulting out of “adult contemporary” territory via a new wave of diverse, distinctive soul singers such as 2019 Grammy nominees Childish Gambino (aka singer-actor Donald Glover), Janelle Monae, Khalid, Solange and SZA and newcomers like H.E.R. – who scored a whopping five nods – Ella Mai, Daniel Caesar and Jorja Smith.

“R&B may have fallen out of fashion because it became too predictable, with nothing to surprise us,” says Peter Edge, chairman and CEO of RCA Records, home to Grammyanointed Gambino, SZA and Khalid as well as genre matriarch Alicia Keys, H.E.R. and Normani. “Our artists now don’t quite fit in what was previously considered R&B – we have less of a tendency of putting artists in specific boxes or genres.”

Monae

By A.D. Amorosi

Reaches

Although Edge, one of the executives most familiar with the US R&B terrain, is British, his history in the genre reaches back to the mid-1980s, when he founded the Cooltempo label (releasing records by such artists as Eric B. & Rakim, Monie Love and EPMD), and later Warner Bros in the US, where he worked with Meshell Ndegeocello and the Jungle Brothers. Given that background, “we’re not turned off by our new artists walking untested grounds” at RCA, he says.

Indeed, the Sony Music-owned label is leading the charge on a crop of singers whose influences span genres and generations, combining music the artists were raised on with the limitless listening possibilities available since the advent of streaming services. To wit: Jorja Smith, 21, has a sound that plays like a fusion of Amy Winehouse, Sade and early Erykah Badu; she cites Nina Simone and Nas – played regularly by her parents – as the soundtrack to her childhood. The same can be said of Khalid, who “grew up online, and took advantage of that, but with a mother who sang classic R&B,” says Tunji Balogun, RCA’s exec VP of A&R.

Khalid, who has performed on five top 20 singles before reaching his 21st birthday, says he signed with the major because RCA “understood my vision and could help me find ways to amplify it.” He adds, “It was important that I was given the freedom to be myself creatively.”

That creativity is reaching more ears than ever: Together, R&B and hip-hop claimed 31% of total albumequivalent volume for the first half of 2018, surpassing rock, which is the second-biggest genre at 23%, according to Nielsen Music. On the radio dial, among people 18-49, the average quarter-hour audience share of Urban Contemporary stations has increased by 15% in the past four years. (RTRS)