The history of R&B

The Story

In the 1980s and 1990s disco gave way to a number of other genres. During this period, superstars such as Prince, Michael Jackson, and Janet Jackson worked within funk and other styles of dance music and produced songs by borrowing from a number of styles. Michael Jackson, in particular, was influenced by popular music from other ethnic regions, most notably Central and South America. Although a number of hybrid styles were created during this time, most popular R&B music remained dance-oriented. Moreover, with the rise of music video in the early 1980s, the dancing abilities of performers gained much greater significance.

By the mid-1990s, elements of rap—including sampling, scratching (a percussion technique that involves running a record needle manually across vinyl records), and declaimed vocals—had become part of what could perhaps best be described as dance-based, post-disco music. The vocal-group tradition of R&B continued, as did the prominence of solo vocal acts, such as singers Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Luther Vandross.

Styles

Urban

Urban is the soul of the '80s and '90s, music that followed the smooth stylings of quiet storm. It demonstrated a debt to pop music, particularly in its polished production techniques. By the late '80s, that sheen had been dulled, thanks to the gritty sounds of hip-hop. After hip-hop, urban had a broader sonic palette, which was reflected in the music of the '90s.

List of Key Artists:

Paula Abdul	Blackstreet	Boyz II Men	Bobby Brown
En Vogue	Guy	Janet Jackson	R. Kelly
New Edition	SWV	TLC	Tony! Toni! Toné!

Go-Go

Gogo was a bass-heavy, funky variation of hip-hop that was designed for house parties. Lyrically, there was little of substance in go-go, but the main message was the beat, not the words. During the mid-'80s, go-go was quite popular within the rap and R&B underground, particularly around the DC area where it originated, but it never became a pop success; the closest it came to a crossover hit was in 1988, when EU -- along with Trouble Funk, the definitive go-go band -- had a moderate hit with "Da Butt," taken from Spike Lee's School Daze. During the late '80s and early '90s, go-go was supplanted by Miami bass music, which took the groove-oriented aesthetic of go-go, turned up the bass, and de-emphasized the already-slim lyrics.

List of Key Artists:

Chuck Brown

Trouble Funk

Code Red

Little Benny & the Masters

New Jack Swing

New jack R&B evolved in the late '80s, when urban contemporary soul artists began incorporating hip-hop rhythms, samples, and production techniques into their sound. Some songs simply had hip-hop beats, others had rapped sections and sung choruses, but the overall result was an edgier, more street-oriented sound that seamlessly blended both the melodic qualities of soul and the funky rhythms of rap. It paved the way for the '90s soul, where the dividing line between rap and R&B was frequently indistinguishable.

List of Key Artists:

Mint Condition

New Edition

Troop

Wreckx-N-Effect

Contemporary R&B

developed after years of Urban R&B. Like Urban, Contmeporary R&B is slickly produced, but the musicians -- Maxwell, D'Angelo, Terence Trent D'Arby -- are obsessed with bringing the grit, spirit and ambitiousness of classic soul (Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding) back to contemporary soul and R&B.

List of Key Artists:

D'Angelo	Ginuwine	Maxwell	Eric Benet
Erykah Badu	Me'Shell NdegeOcello	Next	Roachford

Acid jazz

The music played by a generation raised on jazz as well as funk and hip-hop, acid jazz used elements of all three; its existence as a percussion-heavy, primarily live music placed it closer to jazz and Afro-Cuban than any other dance style, but its insistence on keeping the groove allied it with funk, hip-hop, and dance music. The term itself first appeared in 1988 as both an American record label and the title of an English compilation series that reissued jazz-funk music from the '70s, called "rare groove" by the Brits during a major mid-'80s resurgence. A variety of acid jazz artists emerged during the late '80s and early '90s: live bands such as Stereo MC's, James Taylor Quartet, the Brand New Heavies, Groove Collective, Galliano, and Jamiroquai, as well as studio projects like Palm Skin Productions, Mondo Grosso, Outside, and United Future Organization.

List of Key Artists

The Brand New Heavies

Galliano

Incognito

Jamiroquai

Trip-hop

Yet another in a long line of plastic placeholders to attach itself to one arm or another of the U.K. post-acid house dance scene's rapidly mutating experimental underground, "trip-hop" was coined by the English music press in an attempt to characterize a new style of downtempo, jazz-, funk-, and soul-inflected experimental breakbeat music which began to emerge around in 1993 in association with labels such as Mo'Wax, Ninja Tune, Cup of Tea, and Wall of Sound. Similar to (though largely vocal-less) American hip-hop in its use of sampled drum breaks, typically more experimental, and infused with a high index of ambient-leaning and apparently psychotropic atmospherics (hence "trip"), the term quickly caught on to describe everything from Portishead and Tricky, to DJ Shadow and U.N.K.L.E., to Coldcut, Wagon Christ, and Depth Charge (much to the chagrin of many of these musicians, who saw their music largely as an extension of hip-hop proper, not a gimmicky offshoot). One of the first commercially significant hybrids of dance-based listening music to crossover to a more mainstream audience, full-length releases in the style routinely top indie charts in the U.K. and, in artists such as Shadow, Tricky, Morcheeba, the Sneaker Pimps, and Massive Attack, account for a substantial portion of the first wave of "electronica" acts to reach Stateside audiences.

List of Key Artists

Howie B

DJ Krush

Portishead

Tricky