The truth about R&B in the 21st Century
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soul rattler
Members Posts: 18,852 ✭✭✭✭✭
If you're black and you sing, you will automatically be put in the category of R&B, even if your music is nowhere close to R&B. Sure, you may make it into the Pop category if you're persistent enough in pandering to Eurocentric fast-pace fist pumping music i.e. Rihanna and Flo-Rida... but you'll still get the R&B nod. Of course, anyone white, asian, hispanic, etc. that makes the same type of music will never be put in the category of R&B.
R&B as a genre has become so blurred that no one can/will be put in a strictly R&B category. You'll always get one of the following combinations:
R&B and Soul
R&B and Pop
R&B and Hip Hop
R&B and Urban Pop
And as far as "urban pop" is concerned, pretty much everything past 1999 should be put in that category save John Legend/India Arie/etc. But as far as Jeremih, Drake, most of Trey Songz singles, and whatever local guy with a city-wide one hit wonder (probably about sex or clubbing), that stuff goes in the "urban pop" category.
Thank you R. Kelly, for single-handedly eskewing entire generations' perspective of what is and is not R&B.
R&B as a genre has become so blurred that no one can/will be put in a strictly R&B category. You'll always get one of the following combinations:
R&B and Soul
R&B and Pop
R&B and Hip Hop
R&B and Urban Pop
And as far as "urban pop" is concerned, pretty much everything past 1999 should be put in that category save John Legend/India Arie/etc. But as far as Jeremih, Drake, most of Trey Songz singles, and whatever local guy with a city-wide one hit wonder (probably about sex or clubbing), that stuff goes in the "urban pop" category.
Thank you R. Kelly, for single-handedly eskewing entire generations' perspective of what is and is not R&B.
Comments
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This is R&B
This is not R&B
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v731w6aoEpE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BUQrtlf2lE