For many decades, going as far back as the 1940s, artists from the world of R&B couldn’t really claim mainstream success until they’d crossed over to Top 40 radio and the pop charts. This century, it often feels more like the pop world is crossing over to R&B. The genre has never been more successful, relevant, or ambitious. Many of this century’s epochal blockbuster albums are R&B records: from Usher’s 10-times platinum Confessions, to Beyonce’s Lemonade, to Mariah Carey’s The Emancipation of Mimi, to Rihanna’s Anti. R&B hits omnivorously dominate the Top 10, often leaving room for little else.Aesthetically, it’s a sound that contains multitudes — there’s the organic traditionalism of neo-soul acts like Bilal, Jill Scott, and Erykah Badu, and the new piano-driven classicism of Alicia Keys and John Legend, to the futurism of Janelle Monáe, the goth moodiness of the Weeknd, the unapologetic realness of Monica and SZA, the trap soul of Bryson Tiller, and much more. Hip-hop and R&B, which...
