R&B Is Dying A Slow Painful Death...

When you think about it, R&B (as we know it to be) is slowly dying.

I am talking piano and drums, guitar and bass driven R&B with solid musicality and showmanship. THAT R&B! It's dying and soon to be dead unless we produce some young stars and FAST!

Look at it this way. 10 Years ago, none of us knew Arianna Grande, Taylor Swift, or Adele. I could list 5 to 10 more Pop stars that have emerged to become Megastars within this time frame.

Where are "our" Megastars? We had them in Buckets in the 90's. Lauryn Hill, Toni Braxton, Whitney Houston, Maxwell, Jodeci. I could go on and on about the Megastars that were produced through R&B channels back then. But now, you'd be hard pressed to name me 5 R&B Artists, that weren't known 10 Years ago, that can pack out a coliseum level show? I'll wait..................

R&B is not producing any Megastars. The whole thing is turning into this chanting, semi-rapping, hook and drum track driven monotony of "Oooo Baby, can I hit dat". There are very few songs about anything other than - When can we "get it in" that are even heard and barely make the Top 5 of any chart.

And it's not really the artists fault. It's the consumers as well. Dej Loaf had a Mainstream R&B hit months back called "Try Me". With a hook that said: "Try Me, Try Me, Imma kill his whole MF Family"...not exactly Anita Baker. However, the audience loved it and gave her a #1 Single.

The consumer drives the demand so if they want a song there are 1000 channels (online and offline) today to drive the demand. The consumer gets great projects and sits on them: Tank, Jill Scott, Avant, and a few others have all dropped projects this year with neither selling more than 75,000 units in the first week!

Also, take alook at the awards shows. Did you know several are considering dropping R&B as a category due to low participation at the Grammys and Billboards???  It's crazy when Fetty Wap and Dej Loaf are being considered R&B and Jill Scott can't sell 100,000 units the first week of her new album!

So again, if R&B doesn't produce some young stars in the next 10 years it will slowly fade away. Remember...Jazz and Blues were both BIG genres at one point too!

Houston, we have a PROBLEM...