Where's The Soul?

Shortly after Whitney Houston made the error of declaring her husband Bobby Brown the King of R&B, a fellow listserv member suggested as a fun topic - i.e. the opposite of the typical listserv cat and dog fight debates - that we all select our choice, for King and Queen of Rhythm & Blues. Sounded safe enough.

Well the top answers ran the gamut from Michael Jackson to Mary J. Blige. Let's back up. The topic was the King and Queen of R&B, soul music - the love child of the 60's and Motown. FYI, Michael Jackson is the self-proclaimed King of Pop, but R&B? Un-ah. And Mary J. Blige is not your typical R&B artist thus the title of Queen of Hip-Hop Soul, created especially for her.

So much for a safe, fun topic. Though it didn't turn into an all out cat fight, like any topic on a listserv is subject to do once one person disagrees, there were some that didn't take kindly to me pointing out that many of their selections weren't R&B artists, but were in fact Pop icons. This innocent, fun, Friday discussion brought to my attention a simple fact - the soul in black music has slowly been eaten away by new categorizations and broader, general definitions of radio formats.

In an effort to mainstream music and make it more appealing to a wider audience R&B/Soul music has been diluted. Artists that once would have been automatically categorized as R&B are now riding the fence of Urban, Pop and Hip-Hop. As evidenced by the listservs' spontaneous poll, confusion runs rampant.

It used to be easier to determine which artists were R&B/Soul. Back when America had Rock and Roll, Black America had the Motown sound - which was ultimately R&B. They were the two most popular categorizations. Motown was to black music what incubators are to tech start-ups - an entity that crafted and nurtured an artist until he or she was ready to wow the world with their talent.

Berry Gordy's empire was seen as the only hope for fame among many black artists and its influence set the pace for the success of The Temptations of the 60's, LTD of the 70's, Luther Vandross of the 80's, and D'Angelo of the 90's. And yet, the best candidate we can come up with for King of R&B is Michael Jackson?

Today, R&B/Soul has been relegated to oldies stations and "quiet storm" hours on Urban/Hip-Hop/Top 40 and Pop stations. It no longer commands a 24-hour format. Ironically, you can hear good, current Soul/R&B tracks on oldies stations, signifying that "oldies" refers to the genre and not necessarily the song itself.

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