Over thirty years ago, Mary J. Blige was crowned the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. The title, bestowed on her by record executive Andre Harrell, was the byproduct of the positive reception to her studio album, What’s the 411? On the time of the album’s release, Entertainment Weekly described it as “one of the completed fusions of soul values and hip-hop to this point.” 

Executive-produced by Sean “Puffy” Combs, the album incorporated elements of hip-hop’s beats and narrative-driven lyricism. The meshing of genres prolonged beyond sound and into fashion. Combs hired Misa Hylton, now a mode icon, to curate and produce looks to intensify Blige’s “fly girl” personality and attitude. Through her creative partnerships with Combs and Hylton, Blige introduced not only a recent sound to R&B, but a recent style of singer. 

Within the late Nineties and early 2000s, R&B was at the highest of music charts. The brand new millennium expanded opportunities for musicians to attach with their fans online, through early social media networking sites and fan pages. Nevertheless, because the Web began to attach listeners to genres outside of their locale, preferences within the mid to late 2000s began to orient toward European electronic music and dance-pop. This shift resulted within the prioritization of electro-pop and dance-pop over R&B, which led to the category’s dismissal from the mainstream. 

R&B’s transition to the underground afforded a chance for the genre to reinvent itself. Between 2011 to 2012, Frank Ocean and The Weeknd released their debut mixtapes online. The musical projects —Nostalgia, Ultra and House of Balloons—ushered R&B into the 2010s. As an alternative of using gospel as a number one influence, one of these R&B pulled together elements of other, indie and rock. Although the projects could possibly be considered R&B, they reflected the sound of a Black kid who got here of age on the Web. For that generation, “labeling”—whether when it comes to sexual orientation and gender expression or placing their music in a single specific group—felt like a confine as a substitute of an umbrella under which to construct community.  

As with Blige, Ocean and The Weeknd pushed R&B into one other phase of evolution. Their efforts created a recent entry point for singers to ascertain and develop themselves, without the influence of the radio and music industry.  

“The hit is you moving into a closet—within the studio, in your room—going wherever to make a song that you simply love and a song that you simply personally prefer to take heed to,” says Kaash Paige. “Love Songs,” Paige’s breakout single—which went viral on TikTok in 2019, then amassed hundreds of thousands of streams on SoundCloud and Spotify—is a testament to her word. Before she signed to Def Jam, Paige was an independent artist uploading original R&B songs to SoundCloud. “Love Songs” was one in every of them. 

Since then, the 22-year-old has collaborated with Alicia Keys, 6lack, Don Toliver, Isaiah Rashad, Moneybagg Yo, Lil Tjay, Tinashe and Travis Scott. These experiences have contributed to the maturation of her sound on Soundtrack To My Life, the singer’s sophomore album. She excitedly says of the album, “It’s R&B, however it takes you on a journey. It goes from R&B to turn-up car-y type, after which goes right back all the way down to it.” 

For those unfamiliar with Paige’s stage presence, she rages with the rock star spirit of Lenny Kravitz but has the soft voice of an angel. As an adolescent, she was drawn to alternative and rock music—particularly the way in which they made her feel. At her performances, Paige serves as a conductor. Through her voice, she lulls the audience into the intimate feelings of her songs, followed by a fast transition into her stage-diving personality. For Paige, whether the feeling arises from jumping right into a mosh pit or choosing beats in a recording session, it has put her in a spot where persons are taking notes.   

She lists Ciara’s Goodies and The Weeknd’s Trilogy as examples of up to date R&B albums that make you’re feeling, arguing: “R&B is finding more. R&B is recreating the genre…. It’s a sense. It’s rhythm. Whatever you desire to do, it’s getting your groove. Everybody just create their very own world and permit everybody to be an element of it.” 

The flexibility to create one feeling through music is symbolic of R&B’s relationship with storytelling. For a time frame, R&B was one in every of the few protected spaces where Black women could comfortably disclose their trials and tribulations in addition to their breakthroughs. In R&B, singers became the conduit for channeling personal journeys and establishing a relationship between listeners and the artist.  

Coco Jones present in R&B a medium to inform her own stories, as compared to the characters she plays on the silver screen. “Storytelling with my music is different than on-screen, because on-screen it’s not about me in any respect. It’s really about making the character come to life. And so I’ll sometimes create backstories that are usually not mine—they’re what I’d feel would fit the character, in order that I can present a really authentic version of this character,” she says. “But with my music, it’s all about me. It’s all about how I feel that day.” 

What Didn’t I Tell You, her debut EP, is the compilation of untold stories from a time when Jones didn’t know find out how to be herself. “In my past there have been so many scripts and so many prompts and so many strategic routes that me being authentic with myself,  through music, has helped me to learn more about myself.” 

For the vast majority of Jones’s life she has experienced pressure to be another person, with a purpose to adhere to what Hollywood considers a successful Black woman. Now she has decided to center herself and her own stories, in television and music. 

There are three basic questions in storytelling: Who writes the stories? Who advantages from the story? Who’s missing from the stories? In Muni Long’s case, she is the creator and beneficiary. For over a decade, Long penned award-winning songs for pop’s biggest stars and went by a unique name, but they weren’t the stories she desired to tell.  

“We definitely went through a period of ‘too cool.’ You recognize what I’m saying? I’m too cool for that. I’m too cool to like,” she reflects. “Everybody was attempting to rap-sing at a certain point, and that’s okay. No judgment, because I used to be liking loads of that stuff too—but I feel it’s time to maneuver on,” she adds.  

Long aspired to make songs that evoke emotions, like Method Man and Blige’s “You’re All I Need.” She mentions artists of the era like Combs, known back then as Puff Daddy, and Faith Evans, who understood the facility of a straightforward song that brought great impact since it had “feeling.” 

“I feel people, we’re lacking compassion as of late. Everybody’s so desensitized, and I feel deep down, we would like to be loved—we would like to feel,” Long says. “And I feel so long as I proceed to present them that, and help people escape from the darkness of reality, the more love that we’re capable of inject on the opposite side, immediately, as an artist—I feel that is an excellent opportunity for R&B to type of sneak in there and just take over.”  

Her breakthrough single, “Hrs and Hrs,” provided the right opening for couples to showcase their affectionate love, after an intense period of worldwide lockdown as a result of COVID-19. The song also served as an introduction to Long, the storyteller she at all times desired to be. Long makes the music that she wants to listen to, as a substitute of being encouraged to write down music that’s popular.  

The success of “Hrs and Hrs” helped Long negotiate a partnership with Def Jam, allowing her to give attention to the creation of music as a substitute of serving as her own fashion stylist, hairstylist, makeup artist and more. She describes this state as a “matter of me being consistent with the identical integrity of music, the identical level of music, where people adore it. Each time I put something out, it’s going to must have that very same integrity and the identical impact. I can only pray and hope that I can try this time and again. That’s all I’m focused on.” 

All this to say, R&B is alive and well. It’s just not the identical R&B your parents and grandparents grew up with. Inherently, music is omnipresent and ever-changing, which suggests the singers who create and produce songs change alongside it. The brand new generation will not be just like the one before, but they needs to be welcomed as having the identical relevance and earning the identical respect afforded to Blige in 1992. 

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Coco Jones: Styling by iCON Billingsley. Hair by Hachoo Johnson. Makeup by Diana Shin at A-Frame Agency. Production by The Morrison Group, With Due to L’Ermitage Beverly Hills. 

Muni Long: Styling by Jason Rembert. Hair by Curtis Phillips. Makeup by Scott Osbourne Jr using Pat McGrath and Huda Beauty. Production by The Morrison Group, With Due to L’Ermitage Beverly Hills. 

Production: The Morrison Group