Genre: Urban Soul

Urban Soul/R&B or the “new” R&B is so omnipresent that it’s often identified with the general term R&B, ignoring five decades of musical evolution. Out of the popular Rap/R&B hybrid of New Jack Swing, a new hybrid gradually unfolds, bursting to life in 1998: real Urban Soul or the first wave of Nu R&B. Female, predominantly black artists changed New Jack Swing’s uptempo Hip-Hop sound to a slower, Soul infused ballad (but still much faster than regular Soul). With their sugar-coated voices – often in harmony or slightly autotuned – they swooped a sense of sentimentality over their songs. A sense discredited with shallowness and capitalism: pure Pop music and little R&B. The lyrical content could hardly dismantle this prejudice. Corny, timeless love themes seem to be the basic premise. But Urban Soul is still a lot more R&B than its successor, Urban Breaks. String arrangements, soulful vocals, an absence of sexual promiscuity, and a connection with earlier Disco-/Dance-Pop are all real R&B/Soul elements of Nu R&B’s first wave that would eventually get discarded.