R&B Has the Voices. It No Longer Has the Machine That Made Superstars.

R&B does not have a talent problem. Victoria Monét is making some of the most sophisticated R&B of her generation, Kehlani just won the Grammy for Best R&B Song and SZA has become one of the biggest recording artists in the world. Coco Jones, Muni Long, Summer Walker, H.E.R., Ari Lennox and others have built devoted audiences and made records that would have fit in almost any era of the genre. But something still feels different.

For decades, R&B regularly produced artists who became bigger than the genre itself. Whitney Houston had a voice that could stop a room. Mariah Carey turned an extraordinary vocal range into a decades-long pop career. Mary J. Blige created a sound and emotional vocabulary that became inseparable from modern R&B. Brandy’s vocal arrangements shaped generations of singers, and Beyoncé became an institution unto herself.

These were not simply successful recording artists. The music business spent years developing them, positioning them and putting them in front of enormous audiences until their voices were instantly recognizable. Today, no one clearly holds that position.