Do you ALL know who are 'The LAST GREAT R&B Artists': Solo or Group, Male or Female? For me the 'LAST GREAT Male R&B Artist Group' COULD BE/MAYBE 'Dru Hill', what/how about you Folks? And there is Going to Be A 'VERY REAL HUUGGE' DEBATE on the Rest Of The 3 Categories: Solo Male, Solo Female & Group Female!!!!! And OH!OH! I think that I Just Did Started 'THE DEBATE WARS On THE LAST GREAT R&B ARSTIST'!!!!

[Edited 11/22/20 21:32pm]

[Edited 11/22/20 22:41pm]

I would say Anderson.Paak and H.E.R. would be my personal Last Great R&B artists.

Mint Condition- Group

Anderson Paak- Solo Artist

[Edited 11/24/20 16:44pm]

Maxwell and D´Angelo still make music, so, I´d say Maxwell and D´Angelo.

If you ask me who I currently listen to the most, almost daily, I´d say Abra (the female singer from Atlanta). She´s incredible. She goes way beyond RnB though and I´m not even sure if she´s really considered RnB. Love her beats, melodies and lyrics.

And then there are talented people like Anderson Paak, Thundercat,Meshell Ndegocello,Kali Uchis, Miguel and Frank Ocean but I am not sure if any of those I listed are "great". To me they are.

Luther Vandross

Well, Stevie Wonder is still alive, and still making music. And he's unquestionably the biggest R&B legend still alive today, unless you want to count Smokey or Diana.

Is all the talent going into Hip Hop?

Margot said:

Is all the talent going into Hip Hop?

Hip hop is the #1 genre in the USA and has been for many years. So of course the labels are going to put more money into it. Hip hop has become popular with the mainstream audience in a way R&B never really has. Hip hop is now automatically pop music. It does not have to crossover like R&B did and still does. Only certain R&B artists managed to really crossover, probably starting with Sam Cooke. At the time, Sam was the 2nd most popular act on RCA Records after Elvis Presley.

The current mainstream popular R&B often sounds like hip hop. Even some contemporary country music has trap beats or guest rappers. The more traditional R&B is played on the Adult R&B radio format, which has a smaller and generally older audience. Adult R&B also plays some contemporary acts like Bruno Mars and even songs from singers like Adele & Chris Stapleton. Adult R&B plays old school hip hop too like Heavy D, Biggie Smalls, or Whodini, but few newer rap songs. I've heard the Cardi B/Bruno Mars duets played.

The thing about Hip Hop is the lack of instrument playing and vocal melody/ range. It's like a lost art in such a short time.

There was such a rich tradition of horn sections, rhythm sections, guitars, keyboards etc. in R&B.

Margot said:

There was such a rich tradition of horn sections, rhythm sections, guitars, keyboards etc. in R&B.

Horns in R&B started to die out in the early to mid 1980s, when electrofunk and drum machine programming came into being. Many of those bands dropped the horn sections or they were being used less. Even more so when New Jack Swing took over around 1987. That was pretty much when R&B bands were being phased off of R&B radio and so were the old suit & tie style acts like The Temptations. Some of the early 1990s girl groups had a more tomboy fashion look (Xscape, TLC, Jade, Y?N-Vee, etc).

MickyDolenz said:

Margot said:

There was such a rich tradition of horn sections, rhythm sections, guitars, keyboards etc. in R&B.

Horns in R&B started to die out in the early to mid 1980s, when electrofunk and drum machine programming came into being. Many of those bands dropped the horn sections or they were being used less. Even more so when New Jack Swing took over around 1987. That was pretty much when R&B bands were being phased off of R&B radio and so were the old suit & tie style acts like The Temptations. Some of the early 1990s girl groups had a more tomboy fashion look (Xscape, TLC, Jade, Y?N-Vee, etc).

Prince was using Hornz intermittently through 2013.

I miss the guitars and bass guitars.

Margot said:

Prince was using Hornz intermittently through 2013.

I miss the guitars and bass guitars.

Prince new stuff wasn't really on the radio much past 1994. So that's not what was popular in R&B. It was more hip hopish, such as Mariah Carey's many collabos with whatever rapper was populuar at the moment. Or popular R&B was sample based like Janet Jackson, Mary J. Blige, & Faith Evans. There was a rap break in the middle of songs instead of saxophone or guitar solos, which continues to this day. There were also rappers who had a more sing song style of cadence or just straight singing like Bone Thugs, Fugees, Queen Latifah, Nelly, OutKast, etc. So rap & R&B kinda became interchangeable. In the 1990s there were retro acts, called acid jazz, like Brand New Heavies & Jamiroquai. They were mostly British and acid jazz didn't really catch on in the US mainstream wise. Even they had hip hop elements like DJ scratching. So did Tony! Toni! Toné! who was one of the last R&B bands to get a lot of radio airplay. Brand New Heavies had an entire album of rap collabos.

uPtoWnNY said:

Dalia11 said:

There are many great R&B artists! All their songs need to be played on the radio! 🎸🎤💿⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

this part. R&B fans are super conservative so they think "If it doesn't sound like the 70s it's not REAL R&B" but great R&B music is still being made. SOme of it's on the radio, but R&B artist do need a lot more support.

uPtoWnNY said:

The-Dream.

beast44 said:

Dalia11 said:

There are many great R&B artists! All their songs need to be played on the radio! 🎸🎤💿⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

this part. R&B fans are super conservative so they think "If it doesn't sound like the 70s it's not REAL R&B" but great R&B music is still being made. SOme of it's on the radio, but R&B artist do need a lot more support.

I used to be the same way, and I still feel that R&B should at least have some semblance to traditional rhythm and blues to be considered R&B.

Not counting many of the neo-soul or other R&B artists of the 90's and 00's. For one, they've been out a while and there have been other quality artists that followed them. Second, many of them haven't been nearly as prolific as they could have been. D, Maxwell, Badu, Saadiq -- they've been on the radar but mostly dormant the 10-15 years.

To me, the "greatness" level implies a consistently good and memorable body of work. There are a lot of emerging artists whose work I like, but I think only a few could be considered at that level right now that have released stuff in say the last 5 years or so.

Van Hunt
The Internet
Moonchild
Anderson .Paak
Bilal

So many good artists like Rahsaan Patterson as well.

namepeace said:

beast44 said:

this part. R&B fans are super conservative so they think "If it doesn't sound like the 70s it's not REAL R&B" but great R&B music is still being made. SOme of it's on the radio, but R&B artist do need a lot more support.

I used to be the same way, and I still feel that R&B should at least have some semblance to traditional rhythm and blues to be considered R&B.

Not counting many of the neo-soul or other R&B artists of the 90's and 00's. For one, they've been out a while and there have been other quality artists that followed them. Second, many of them haven't been nearly as prolific as they could have been. D, Maxwell, Badu, Saadiq -- they've been on the radar but mostly dormant the 10-15 years.

To me, the "greatness" level implies a consistently good and memorable body of work. There are a lot of emerging artists whose work I like, but I think only a few could be considered at that level right now that have released stuff in say the last 5 years or so.

Van Hunt
The Internet
Moonchild
Anderson .Paak
Bilal

So many good artists like Rahsaan Patterson as well.

Great post, and I totally agree. Maxwell, D´Angelo and Erykah Badu are great but the polar opposite of "prolific". I think Maxwell shouldn´t have tried to make a trilogy concept album in the first place....that put a lot of pressure on that project and , in my opinion, became more of a burden than a great idea. I think he still has a lot of talent and I really like most of the remixes of his classic songs that he´s been posting on Soundcloud recently.

.

D´Angelo is super talented but extremely slow and too much of a perfectionist but I love every single one of his albums and have seen him twice , which is a miracle in itself considering how rarely he tours. Both shows were fantastic !

Erykah is still cool in my book but I must admit that her last two albums, despite being good, were not that memorable, or not as memorable as Mama´s Gun, and I often wonder why she doesn´t release more. Is it because of her raising three kids, too much weed or just not believing in albums anymore? She hinted that she´d never release an album again. That would be sad.

.

I like Van Hunt, Anderson Paak and Bilal, and all the others you mentioned, and I like Thundercat and Flying Lotus but of all the relatively "new" RnB artists I´ve discovered in the last five or six years, I like Abra the most. She is really amazing and full of surprises, and very, very talented yet humble.

Check her out, I´m sure you´ll like her.

Fruit is a masterpiece of a song and I am sure you´ll be just as addicted to it as I am .

KoolEaze said:

namepeace said:

I used to be the same way, and I still feel that R&B should at least have some semblance to traditional rhythm and blues to be considered R&B.

Not counting many of the neo-soul or other R&B artists of the 90's and 00's. For one, they've been out a while and there have been other quality artists that followed them. Second, many of them haven't been nearly as prolific as they could have been. D, Maxwell, Badu, Saadiq -- they've been on the radar but mostly dormant the 10-15 years.

To me, the "greatness" level implies a consistently good and memorable body of work. There are a lot of emerging artists whose work I like, but I think only a few could be considered at that level right now that have released stuff in say the last 5 years or so.

Van Hunt
The Internet
Moonchild
Anderson .Paak
Bilal

So many good artists like Rahsaan Patterson as well.

Great post, and I totally agree. Maxwell, D´Angelo and Erykah Badu are great but the polar opposite of "prolific". I think Maxwell shouldn´t have tried to make a trilogy concept album in the first place....that put a lot of pressure on that project and , in my opinion, became more of a burden than a great idea. I think he still has a lot of talent and I really like most of the remixes of his classic songs that he´s been posting on Soundcloud recently.

.

D´Angelo is super talented but extremely slow and too much of a perfectionist but I love every single one of his albums and have seen him twice , which is a miracle in itself considering how rarely he tours. Both shows were fantastic !

Erykah is still cool in my book but I must admit that her last two albums, despite being good, were not that memorable, or not as memorable as Mama´s Gun, and I often wonder why she doesn´t release more. Is it because of her raising three kids, too much weed or just not believing in albums anymore? She hinted that she´d never release an album again. That would be sad.

.

I like Van Hunt, Anderson Paak and Bilal, and all the others you mentioned, and I like Thundercat and Flying Lotus but of all the relatively "new" RnB artists I´ve discovered in the last five or six years, I like Abra the most. She is really amazing and full of surprises, and very, very talented yet humble.

Check her out, I´m sure you´ll like her.

Fruit is a masterpiece of a song and I am sure you´ll be just as addicted to it as I am .

Thanks for the kind words. I'm just now exploring Flying Lotus' music, I like Flamagra. I was underwhelmed by Thundercat's It Is What It Is, but he's trending towards great, as Drunk was a masterpiece, and he wrote what could be the greatest R&B song of the 21st century, with "Them Changes."

I'll give Abra a spin. Thanks!

namepeace says

Drunk was a masterpiece, and he wrote what could be the greatest R&B song of the 21st century, with "Them Changes."

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

yep..

"Them Changes"

"Bus In These Streets"

"Jethro"

"DragonBall Durag" (not on Drunk but released 2020)

"Tron Song" (on "Apocalypse")

...all my favorite Thundercat joints

Tinashe

spacedolphin said:

funkaholic1972 said:

I would say Anderson.Paak and H.E.R. would be my personal Last Great R&B artists.

Anderson.Paak is so damn good!

D'Angelo