In my article on the renaissance of women in R&B, I write about a new generation of artists who are reshaping the genre, with some returning to the music’s gospel-based roots and others annexing fresh sonic territory — hybridizing with the latest hip-hop, grafting in global sounds and claiming R&B’s rightful stake in pop music today. That tells only part of the story, though, as many R&B artists resist the industry’s categorizations: While accepting the award for best country album at this year’s Grammys, Beyoncé, a 16-time winner as a solo artist in R&B categories, voiced an opinion shared by many Black artists: “I think sometimes ‘genre’ is a code word to keep us in our place.”
What unites today’s R&B with music of the past is its celebration of voice. Fans don’t talk only about who can sing but about who can sang — enlisting their physical gifts and knowledge of tradition in performances that reach past exhaustion. Below is a playlist of nine songs, all released since 2020, by women artists who are extending and redefining R&B’s rich tradition.
1. Muni Long’s “Make Me Forget” (2024)
“Sometimes people just need to leave stuff alone when it comes to classics,” Long told me in an interview, recalling her hesitancy when the producer Tricky Stewart presented her with the instrumental for “Make Me Forget,” a spare interpolation of D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” (2000). But writing her own song on top of one of the most seductive songs (and music videos) in R&B history presented a welcome challenge. The verses tease out the terms of a fledgling relationship, working with and against old-school gender roles (“Know when to walk away / When I’d rather that you stay / Gently put me in my place / Leave when I need some space”). In the chorus, Long pleads three straight times for her new love to make her forget — the pain of her past relationship? The man before him? — only for the final line to reveal that she’s asking for him to make her forget “anything before you that didn’t feel like this.”
2. Summer Walker’s “Session 33” (2021)
On 2018’s “Session 32,” Walker sings about the messy process of moving on from a failed relationship (“Threw away your love letters / I thought it’d make me feel better”). The recording has all the qualities of a home demo, down to the sequenced title and the absence of the mixing and mastering of the modern studio — a conscious choice to underscore the song’s raw emotions. “Session 33” is its natural extension, but with a difference. Still an acoustic affair, featuring Walker’s voice and guitar, the recording now offers some studio sweeteners that “Session 32” lacked: echoed vocal effects, harmonic overdubs and Walker’s cleanly miked voice. “Session 33” shares with its predecessor the sense that the artist is letting us in on her creative process — as well as on her romantic life. “Should I move on since no one’s here?” she asks herself. The song never answers.
3. Jazmine Sullivan’s “Pick Up Your Feelings” (2021)
With her 2021 concept album, “Heaux Tales,” Sullivan gave voice to herself and many other women working against the sexist conceit, sometimes perpetuated in R&B, that women are conquests and men are conquerors. On songs like “Put It Down,” “Lost One” and, most powerfully, “Pick Up Your Feelings,” she renovates the tired theme of the no-good man by centering her own — and other women’s — empowerment. The whole album is an exercise in validating female sexual desire while also acknowledging women’s equal capacity to do dirt, all while condemning the societal double standard that lets men do the same without tarnishing their reputations. But Sullivan’s not writing an essay; she’s engaged in a vocal workout session. And her peers have taken notice: “I’ve literally watched Jazmine Sullivan videos hundreds of times, slowed them down to 0.25 speed and mapped out the note transitions on sheets of paper that end up looking like infinite stairs,” says the artist Jessie Reyez. “Hearing her sing is like watching someone make a joke out of gravity.”
4. H.E.R.’s “Process” (2021)
On this song, H.E.R. flows like a rapper, layering similes (“Holdin’ it back like a slingshot / Holdin’ it back like hair ties”), slanting rhymes (Rolex / protest / progress / process / my chest / contest) and spitting ad-libs (uhs, ayes, ohs). In the R&B and soul tradition, ad-libs are the seemingly spontaneous but purposeful melodic and harmonic interjections that express themselves in words (echoing key language from the lyrics, for instance) and sounds (embellishing with moans and melodic flourishes). As the author and T contributor Emily Lordi writes in her book “The Meaning of Soul” (2020), ad-libs “loosen up sonic structures so unexpected possibilities can slip in.” The last 90 seconds of “Process,” a nearly four-minute song, feature few words, yet H.E.R. charges her runs with expressive force and beauty that language alone couldn’t achieve.
5. Tems’s “Ready” (2024)
This Nigerian singer-songwriter inflects her R&B with the rhythms of Afrobeats and a commitment to faith born of her Christian upbringing. “Ready,” like “Wickedest,” “Burning” and “Gangsta” (all songs from her 2024 album “Born in the Wild”), is about self-affirmation and personal belief. If you listened to Tems’s sensual delivery alone without considering the lyrics, however, you’d think she was singing about romantic love. In fact, she’s announcing her readiness for growth and success; she’s now ready to “put it on a song.” The sonic atmosphere brings to mind the Nigerian British singer Sade, whom Tems counts as a defining influence.
6. Victoria Monét’s “Alright” (2023)
This one’s as raw as any rap song. Over a pulsing four-on-the-floor beat produced by the Montreal-based musician Kaytranada, Monét spits a swaggy paean to her sexual prowess. The energy builds through the tension between the explicit lyrics and her sweet singing. With the synth bass occupying the low end and Monét’s vocals on the top, the result is a kaleidoscopic soundscape that renders the lyrics secondary. That’s not to say they’re irrelevant. If this song had been released in the early 2000s, it would have been cloaked in innuendo, much like Ciara’s “Goodies” (2004). Instead, it revels in its directness.
7. Raye’s “Worth It.” (2023)
The United Kingdom has long been both an avid consumer of R&B music and a frequent producer of gifted singers, from Amy Winehouse to Adele to Estelle. That tradition continues today with standout artists like Arlo Parks and Olivia Dean, Mahalia and Jorja Smith, Little Simz and Ella Mai. Raye’s independently released 2023 solo debut, “My 21st Century Blues,” lives up to its name. It’s also expansive in style, with influences drawn from drum-and-bass, hip-hop, rock and other genres. “Worth It.” is grounded in Raye’s reverent, blues- and gospel-based approach to singing but builds dynamic tension against an avant-garde blend of funky horns, guitar, bass and strings.
8. Coco Jones’s “Here We Go (Uh Oh)” (2024)
In 1978, Lenny Williams, the former lead singer of the R&B band Tower of Power, released the supplicating ballad “’Cause I Love You,” which features some of the most emotionally intense singing on record. The hit’s been sampled dozens of times, including by Jones, who centers the love in her track around the feeling of losing it. Her vocal performance is the star, moving from restraint in the first verse to a stylized cracking under the weight of feeling in the second. Though not exactly a response record to Williams’s across the 46 years, the song’s a fitting inheritor of the soul tradition.
9. Tinashe and Charli XCX’s “B2b” (2024)
R&B isn’t only about love, loss and longing. There’s a deep tradition of dance songs, too, best epitomized by Janet Jackson’s long run of hits, starting with 1986’s “Control.” As Tinashe told me, “I think she demonstrates the lack of genre within the genre. She’s always experimenting with rhythms and tempos and sounds and styles.” You can hear Tinashe doing the same on the remix to Charli XCX’s “B2b.” It’s a frenetic dance track, clocking in at a speedy 130 beats per minute. “When I’m listening to music, I’m visualizing how I might move [to it] in a particular way,” she says. “It inspires movement of my body.”
Coco Jones: Hair: Kaleel Joy. Makeup: Kenya Alexis. Victoria Monét: Hair: JStayReady. Makeup: Ernesto Casillas. Photo assistant: Rashad Royal. Tailor: Hasmik Kourinian. Set designer’s assistant: Betsy Costello. Stylist’s assistants: Olaoluwa Olajide, Frankie Benkovic
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