If You Think Present-Day R&B Is Dead, That's A Skill Issue

During a recent red carpet interview at the VMAs, a reporter asked Summer Walker for her opinion on the current state of R&B. She replied almost instantly with a resounding: “I don’t like it.”

I understand where she’s coming from as an artist signed to a major. R&B doesn’t get enough support at labels, forcing an over-reliance on samples and 808s that renders a lot of today’s radio-forward, mainstream R&B incredibly uninspired and borderline unlistenable. However, as one of the few modern R&B mainstream stars keeping the genre visible, successful and innovative, it was surprising to hear Summer dismiss the whole thing. She went on to lament how much she loves 90s R&B, and that due to her love of 90s R&B she just can’t get into the present-day sound — and I’m so sorry, but this talking point is TIRED. Love you Summer, but ion wanna hear it no more.

I blame the interviewer as well— because this question is uninteresting and rage bait at best, rarely ever producing an interesting response. In fact, can we make this question illegal? What about “who are the up and coming R&B singers you’re listening to right now?” There are so many emerging and underground R&B artists successfully channeling nostalgic sounds and creating new ones, but we stay on this tired ass convo instead of spotlighting them. This is part of why I started the below thread and accompanying playlist. In my view, most people who echo this point of view simply do not have their finger on the pulse of today’s R&B. It’s an admission of one’s own ignorance more than anything.

And look, I really don’t mean to malign the people in this camp—at least not everyone. As I keep saying, music discovery has completely changed (derogatory). It’s 239423042839 times harder to even keep up with new releases from the artists you already like, let alone find new music. If you grew up in the 90s and 2000s, you witnessed R&B/soul rival pop and rock as the biggest genre in the US market (see a fun visualization of these trends here). Ashanti, Aaliyah, Mariah, Brandy, Monica, Erykah Badu, Whitney, Boyz II Men, Usher, Brian McKnight, Destiny’s Child, Toni Braxton, Janet Jackson, Sade, D’Angelo, Ginuwine and so many more were charting like Sabrina Carpenter and Taylor Swift do today. They were forcing white girls to do R&B because it was so profitable! That meant passive listening/music discovery, whether it was via MTV, the radio, or just walking into a record store and seeing what was new and hot, could actually lead you to some fantastic fucking R&B. We do not live in that world anymore. Fantastic R&B still exists. It’s just way harder to find!

Mainstream R&B is indeed in the gutter and seriously disconnected from underground, emerging and alternative R&B artists. The radio and its reflections were once key discovery channels for the best of the best and now they just reflect the worst—the exact sounds that drown out the innovative greatness and empower the talking points that the forever nostalgic millennials and gen x-ers keep parroting. But what the algorithms and gatekeepers push (or lack thereof) cannot and should not be the defining face of modern-day R&B. If we accept that, we’re accepting what profit hungry gatekeepers have established as mainstream—YouTube, Tik Tok, Apple, Spotify, majority white male board rooms, major labels, [insert every profit-obsessed entity that has its grubby hands in the music industry]). If we succumb to them, we’re doomed. Are we really going to let algorithms define culture?

There is no shortage of amazing R&B today and while a lot of it is more underground, there have also been big R&B hits every year of this decade (more to come on that). Instead of giving space to conversations that frame the genre negatively, we need to be spotlighting both the artists actually pushing boundaries and the breakthrough mainstream success we still see. I’m talking more niche acts like Elmiene, Kelela, Amber Mark, Nao, Tinashe, Alex Isley, Amaarae, Jai’Len Josey, Ambré, Destin Conrad, Khamari, Q, Dylan Sinclair, Lianne La Havas, Durand Bernarr, Fousheé, rum.gold and more mainstream ones like SZA, Beyoncé, Leon Thomas, Coco Jones, Victoria Monét, Chloe x Halle, Summer Walker, Kehlani, Lucky Daye, Ravyn Lenae, Ari Lennox, Tinashe, FLO, Tems, Tyla, Normani, Muni Long, FKA Twigs, Mariah The Scientist, Kali Uchis and the list goes on. Shit, the white pop girls too! Ariana and Justin always fill their albums with R&B and even Sabrina Carpenter slid some R&B into her breakout album and it’s one of her the most successful songs of her career. Not all of these artists above are definitively “R&B artists” at all and I never intend to pigeonhole them—but all of them have released beautiful R&B/soul infused tracks that contribute to the genre’s palpable aliveness.

Giving into the R&B is dead mindset because the lowest-hanging fruit is not as sweet as it once was is a symptom of more insidious realities — the FYPification of our lives, big tech’s algorithmic control, and the idea that music is only worth attention once it’s achieves certain data-based milestones, which we know is completely antithetical to art. I love analyzing the numbers, the data, the charts as much as the next gay but don’t be mistaken: Numbers and profit alone will never define art’s cultural importance and anyone who reduces its value down to those metrics does not actually like music. They like competition.

Let’s push ourselves to be curious consumers—if you’re an R&B fan who loves the genre and is craving more, you’re going to have to search for it in 2025 and beyond. We can no longer rely on industry channels to feed it to us.

How do I do this, you may be asking? Well, start with CD Radio (yes it all goes back to ME). I am already doing the work of finding the incredible R&B that gets buried by endless releases and misinformed noise, so all you have to do is tune in. My playlist Top 40: Heavy Rotation is a great place to start, as well as the thread I linked above if you’re on X (which I’ve turned into a playlist here). Also, I’m going to be more regularly sharing bite-sized reviews of the songs I’m loving via this blog to keep y’all in the know, and many of those will be R&B songs. So, you can just stick around here and rest assured you’ll get the recs 🙂

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CD Radio is a platform where I muse about the music I’m listening to it and why I love it. In this digitally gluttonous/hyperconsumptive/painfully oversaturated music and media climate, a lot of people are struggling to keep up with music or find good music at all. At the same time, so many music media and discovery platforms are focused on everything but the music. CD Radio is my answer to that problem— I’m helping you cut through the noise and not just discover but properly experience great music because there’s still so much of it, and not enough space and time to revel in it. Think of me as scraping off the top for you.

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