Two decades of great music just passed, from Lauren Hill’s
Miseducation to Immortal Technique’s Third World. I wonder what this year has
in store for us musically. I know I talk a lot about rap/Hip Hop on my blog,
but this time let me take a different route and salute another great genre I
love… R&B!
First let’s get to what R&B or RnB is. R&B simply
stands for rhythm and blues which combines elements of pop, soul, funk, gospel,
Hip Hop and dance music and was predominately of African American or Black
origin. It’s said to have evolved from Jazz music and as late as the 1920’s was
going by the name of ‘jazz blues’, in early 1940’s as ‘blues and rhythm’, then
finally around 1948 to simply Rhythm and Blues.
Now, two R&B albums that blew my mind in 1998 were Dru
Hill’s – Enter the Dru and Lauren Hill’s – The Miseducation of Lauren Hill. If
you look at how they are classified you will see why I’m quoting them. A quick Google
search will reveal that they both fall under similar categories namely; contemporary
RnB, rhythm and blues, soul and ah yes Hip Hop! (We’ll always come back to
that… insert evil scientist’s laugh).
Another group that was making waves during this period was
Destiny’s Child, comprising of Beyoncé Knowles, LaTavia Roberson, Kelly Rowland
and Le Toya Luckett. Lets pause for a second, who would have thought then, that
little miss “No No No” would eventually get married to Mr “Hard knock Life” (haha).
And ten years later she would drop a monster of an album titled I Am Sasha
Fierce!
If you look at it, a lot was happening in these two decades.
You had new artists coming out and current ones experimenting with new styles.
A lot of commercially successful crossover records were also being released,
for example Mariah Carey’s album E=MC2 (2008) which incorporated
various genres in its production, to Kanye West’s 808’s and Heartbreak.
These changes however have come at a great price for the
genre. Long before Nas stated that Hip Hop was dead in 2006, many R&B
artists and enthusiasts were claiming in the late 90’s that R&B was on its
death bed. There was so much borrowing, sampling and cross genre features that
it became too mixed and matched to be identified with its contemporary past.
The Hip Hop wave had hit and for the R&B artist to survive they had to
adopt a Hip Hop image.
Therefore, to survive a lot of unwritten no no’s (pardon the
pun) had to be broken in order for R&B artists to enjoy the same money,
power and respect as their peers in other genres. Relevancy is the most coveted
currency for most musicians. The ability to appeal to a broad market regardless
of whether you’re charting will always ensure that you can fill a concert hall
with a diehard fan base. Because, nothing is as envious as having a career that
spans decades and still sparks the same enthusiasm as when you first arrived.
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