R&B

Before there was 'rhythm and blues,' there were 'race records'—a classification that segregated Black popular music from 1920 onward. The term was honest about the market's racism while hiding the music's innovation.

In juke joints and roadhouses across the American South, electric amplification was transforming the blues. T-Bone Walker electrified the guitar. Jump blues bands merged swing with blues feeling. Big bands gave way to smaller combos with bigger sounds.

The music was already evolving when a Billboard reporter decided to give it a new name. What followed would reshape American popular music—and teach pop how to feel.

In June 1949, Jerry Wexler—a young reporter at Billboard magazine—proposed replacing 'race records' with 'rhythm and blues.' The change was partly humanitarian (the old term was offensive) and partly commercial (the new term was marketable).

The classification created a chart. The chart created radio formats. Radio formats created audiences. And suddenly, Black popular music had infrastructure—flawed, exploitative, but functional.

Atlantic Records, founded in 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun with $10,000, was positioned to ride this wave. They signed Ruth Brown in 1949, and she became 'Miss Rhythm'—building the label hit by hit until it could afford to sign Ray Charles.

The naming wasn't just semantic. It was economic architecture. A category became a culture.

New Orleans was R&B's first capital. In a room just 15 by 16 feet at J&M Recording Studio, teenage engineer Cosimo Matassa captured a sound that would define the genre: rolling piano triplets, second-line rhythms, warm vocal tones.

Fats Domino's 'The Fat Man' (1949) sold a million copies—one of the first R&B records to cross over to white audiences. Little Richard improvised 'Tutti Frutti' at the Dew Drop Inn, then recorded it at J&M, launching rock and roll's most flamboyant career.

Behind them was producer Dave Bartholomew, who assembled the house band and wrote many of Domino's hits. The system was already in place: a studio, a producer, a house band, a label relationship. Every major R&B city would replicate this model.

Memphis developed two distinct but related sounds. At Stax Records—a converted movie theater where the sloped floor created unique acoustics—an integrated house band (Booker T. & the M.G.'s) backed virtually every recording. The result was grittier, rawer than Motown: the delayed backbeat, the horn punch, the unpolished emotion.

At Royal Studios, Willie Mitchell discovered Al Green and created smooth Southern soul. Both sounds were shaped by architecture. Both were built by bands who created distinctive styles.

And both were destroyed by business failures—Stax collapsed in 1975 after a disastrous distribution deal that exposed the vulnerability of Black-owned labels in a white-dominated industry.

Berry Gordy borrowed $800 from his family in 1959 and built an empire. Motown applied Detroit's automotive assembly-line principles to music: quality control, in-house production, artist development, and relentless polish.

In Studio A—nicknamed 'The Snake Pit' for its claustrophobic intimacy—the Funk Brothers played on more #1 hits than the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, and Elvis combined. They were paid $10 per song. They received no royalties. They were not credited on album covers until 1971.

Motown's 'charm school' taught artists to appeal to white audiences—proper diction, choreography, etiquette. It was crossover by design. But in 1972, Gordy moved operations to Los Angeles. The Funk Brothers discovered this when they saw a notice on the studio door.

Philadelphia developed R&B's most sophisticated sound. At Sigma Sound Studios, producer Thom Bell and songwriter-producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff orchestrated what became 'soul in a tuxedo.'

MFSB—'Mother Father Sister Brother'—was a 30+ member orchestra that played on Philadelphia International hits. Their own 'TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)' became Soul Train's theme and the first TV theme song to reach #1.

The Philadelphia Sound was consciously upmarket: lush strings, sophisticated arrangements, positive messages. It was crossover by elevation rather than dilution. But like every R&B capital before it, Philadelphia's moment faded as trends shifted.

Every major R&B sound was built by largely uncredited session musicians. The Funk Brothers at Motown, Booker T. & the M.G.'s at Stax, MFSB in Philadelphia, the Swampers at Muscle Shoals—these bands created the sounds that made stars.

They were paid per song. They received no royalties. They were rarely credited. At Motown, the rate was $10 per song—regardless of how many millions that song sold.

This invisibility was structural. The 'artist' model of popular music requires a face, a name, a story. The musicians who actually played the music were hidden behind that story. It took decades and documentaries to begin correcting the record.

R&B's evolution tracks precisely with technological change. Each major innovation didn't just change the sound—it created an entirely new era.

Electric amplification (1940s) allowed solo instruments to compete with big bands. Multitrack recording (1958+) enabled layered production. Synthesizers (1972+) with Stevie Wonder's TONTO began the electronic era.

Drum machines (1980–82) transformed everything. Marvin Gaye's 'Sexual Healing' (1982) was the first US hit to feature the TR-808—and the first to use the machine as an instrument of intimacy rather than cold rhythm. This shifted R&B's entire trajectory.

Auto-Tune (1997) was created by Andy Hildebrand, who admits: 'I put that setting in the software. But I didn't think anyone in their right mind would ever use it.' Cher's 'Believe' (1998) proved him wrong.

R&B history typically centers male producers—Berry Gordy, Quincy Jones, Teddy Riley. But women were equally foundational, though systematically undervalued.

Ruth Brown didn't just sing for Atlantic—she built it, hit by hit, then fought for royalties reform that benefited all artists. Sylvia Robinson created hip-hop's first hit ('Rapper's Delight') and first socially conscious hit ('The Message'). Sylvia Rhone became the first African-American woman to run a major label (Elektra, 1994).

Missy Elliott summarized the disparity: 'A lot of people don't know a lot of records that I've written or produced... I always said if a man would have done half the records that I've done we would know about it.'

The narrative that 'hip-hop killed R&B' is false. The genres have been in continuous mutual exchange since the late 1980s.

Hip-hop sampled R&B from the beginning—DJ Kool Herc spinning funk and soul breaks. R&B adopted hip-hop production starting with New Jack Swing (Teddy Riley, 1987). The relationship was bidirectional: R&B provided melodic/harmonic vocabulary; hip-hop provided rhythmic/production vocabulary.

Mary J. Blige's 'What's the 411?' (1992) is credited with inventing hip-hop soul—not hip-hop taking over R&B, but a genuine hybrid created by an R&B vocalist working over hip-hop production.

On December 11, 1999, Billboard officially recognized the merger: the chart became 'Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.' The genres had been evolving together for a decade; the industry finally caught up.

'Crossover' in R&B has always meant: music created by Black artists reaching white audiences through controlled sanitization or strategic positioning.

In the 1950s, white artists like Pat Boone recorded note-for-note covers of Black originals for segregated radio. LaVern Baker watched Georgia Gibbs copy her arrangements and outsell her—leading Baker to petition Congress for arrangement copyright protection. She failed.

Big Mama Thornton recorded 'Hound Dog' in 1952. It sold 2 million copies. She received $500 total. 'That song sold over 2 million records. I got one check for $500 and never saw another.'

The economic reality: artists who crossed over earned more money, but often at the cost of Black cultural specificity. The industry extracted value while limiting Black ownership.

Every generation believes the previous generation's R&B was 'real' and the current generation is corrupted. This pattern has repeated for 75 years.

1960s: Jump blues was 'real'; soul is too smooth. 1970s: Classic soul was 'real'; disco is selling out. 1980s: Motown/Stax was 'real'; synthesizers ruined vocals. 1990s: 80s quiet storm was 'real'; hip-hop is taking over. 2000s: 90s hip-hop soul was 'real'; Auto-Tune ruined singing. 2010s: 2000s R&B was 'real'; alternative R&B isn't 'real.'

The evidence against these claims is overwhelming: technology has always shaped R&B sound, each era produced enduring classics, and 'authenticity' claims typically mask genre boundary policing. R&B's reinvention isn't a bug—it's the defining feature.