‘The Yearning, the Begging, the Pleading’: R&B Went Back to Basics—and Fans Rejoiced

Thomas, a 32-year-old singer-songwriter from Brooklyn, didn’t necessarily rewrite the script, but he did bring it back into focus. “Mutt,” his vulnerable hit from 2024, showed fans what mainstream R&B was missing: storytelling about the peaks and woes of his dating life coupled with sexy riffs, a little bit of funk, and live instrumentals. “Live music still matters,” he told The Cut of the use of live guitar, piano, and drums in the majority of his work. 

“Between 2018 and 2020, there were a lot of those ‘R&B is dead’ claims. I'd always said that wasn't the case,” says Wongo Okon, a writer who’s covered the genre for years. Okon credits Jones’ early EPs, Thomas’ Electric Dusk, Victoria Monet’s Jaguar II, and SZA’s SOS with keeping the genre afloat. “The initial kind of jump is Coco Jones and Victoria Monet, but Leon Thomas is helping to push it even further and bring R&B back into the spotlight. It's obviously gone more mainstream.” 

Fans and industry folks seem to agree that the popular resurgence of R&B owes in part to increased attention to details in production. “[Artists] are working with producers and working and strengthening the collaborative process to ensure that they’re really getting the best out of songs,” Okon says. He cites Kehlani’s “Folded” and Mariah the Scientist’s “Burning Blue” as examples. “Mariah’s not the best singer, but that's a great song.” In other cases, a seemingly minor addition can take a track to the next level. 

Khris Riddick-Tynes, the Grammy-winning songwriter and producer with credits on Kehlani’s “Folded” and SZA’s “Snooze,” is happy listeners are waking up to the importance of the creative process. “Folded,” Riddick-Tynes says, was the result of hours of conversation with Kehlani, whom he calls a “little sister.” 

“It's like a therapy session,” Riddick-Tynes says. “That's the secret sauce to having songs that feel relatable. Because I know if I feel the feeling, it's more than likely you're gonna have felt that feeling the same at some point in your life.” 

The ability to elicit a visceral response is what separates the amateurs from the generational R&B talents. But for a while, it seemed, artists and producers prioritized algorithms over emotion, chasing virality over durable music. In the meantime, with new hits few and far between, veterans like Gladys Knight, Chaka Khan, Patti LaBelle, Stephanie Mills, Genuine, Lloyd, Monica, Brandy and Kelly Rowland poured their hearts out live for yearning fans. 

“You can’t sprinkle gold on doodoo. I don't care how hot the beat is,” Riddick-Tynes says. “A lot of my peers didn't have the mentorship,” he adds, citing Babyface as one of the musical pioneers that took him and Kehlani under his wing early in their careers. “So what you end up getting is a lot of people trying to push out bullshit, not really having conversations, and trying to make a record out of nonsense.” 

Riddick-Tynes considers “Mutt” an “uncomfortable record,” “Snooze” an honest one, and “Folded” a vulnerable song. “The main thing in all those records is just telling the truth and being honest,” he says. “And that goes from the songwriting process down to the chords and the way we produce the records—it just feels personal.” 

Okon sees things similarly. “The yearning, the begging, the pleading … whether it makes sense or not with the situation at hand is something that we can all relate to, because that's how love is sometimes,” he says.  

With the Grammys a little more than a week away, it’s unclear how Thomas, Kehlani, SZA, Destin Conrad, Summer Walker, Giveon, Teyana Taylor and more will fare in the five R&B categories, but the competition is filled with the type of emotion that makes you want to clutch your chest or cry in the rain à la the early 2000s. 

At the same time, Ari Lennox, Jill Scott, Ella Mai, and Bruno Mars, as well as Kehlani, are set to release new projects this year, keeping fans fed. “There are a lot of artists in writing mode right now,” Okon says. “I would assume that they would be motivated by what’s happening [across the genre], and that will only produce good music, if you ask me.”