Neo-Soul: Shaking Up A New Sound
Author: Julianna Cooper, Challenge America Program Coordinator
A musical genre fusing soul and contemporary R & B with elements of jazz hip-hop, and gospel, neo-soul took the world by storm in the late 1990s. Neo soul differed from contemporary R&B with its use of live instrumentation, bypassing the” sampling” techniques R&B had adopted from hip hop music. Often sounding more “soulful”than contemporary soul and R&B, it usually contains deeper messages and meanings.
Neo-soul first surfaced when Kedar Massenburg, a music executive of Motown Records coined the term in the 1990s, though the roots of Neo-Soul music can be traced back to the 1980s. This new term was Massenburg’s way of marketing this merge of genres. In the early 2000s, the movement experienced a brief decline. As music journalist Tyler Lewis said,
“The industry, which already has a hard time with unapologetic and complicated black artists, had no idea what to do with all these enormously talented individuals who rejected entire marketing campaigns designed to introduce them to the record-buying public. As such, albums were shelved or delayed or retooled and artists were dropped from major labels and forced to go it alone, making the first decade of the 21st century the least ‘soulful’—however you define it—decade for the industry itself in decades.”
Thankfully, the genre did not die. With the debut of Alicia Keys’ smash album Songs in A Minor, neo-soul began picking up more success . In 2010, neo soul quickly picked up speed once again with new artists such as John Legend and Anthony Hamilton. Even now, neo-soul continues to evolve and is taking on new heights through new singers such as Lizzie Berchie, SiR, Ari Lennox, and Daniel Caesar.
Iconic Neo-Soul Artists:
Erykah Badu - often credited as the founder of neo soul. Erykah Badu is known as the “First Lady of Neo Soul,” with many of her albums considered a model for the genre.
D’Angelo
Maxwell
Jill Scott
Angie Stone
Lauryn Hill
Alicia Keys
John Legend
Anthony Hamilton
Daniel Caesar
Lizzie Berchie
SiR
Ari Lennox
