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R&B (Rhythm & Blues) is a style that was played by black people in the late 1940s. It was grew out of Blues and Gospel. It was maily a dance music. R&B contains elements of Jazz as its driving rhythm. Isley Brothers and Ray Charles were these early performers. The all-encompassing term used to describe the African-American wellspring of postwar popular music. From rhythm and blues has come rock, soul, funk, rap and regional and stylistic offshoots. Critics consider rhythm and blues's birth to coincide with the decline of big bands and jazz's turn toward the bop emphasis on soloing. Rhythm and blues retained an emphasis on vocals while adding a more pronounced beat characteristic of the blues.
Rhythm & Blue Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
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Anita Baker is back from hiatus
Anita Baker is back after a decade-long hiatus with a sumptuous album that will thrill fans of her benchmark 1986 release "The Rapture". Her velvet alto remains pristine and Baker wraps it around 10 smoky tracks - nine of which she co-wrote - with familiar lyrics about hearts bursting with both joy and pain.
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My Everything
Anita Baker
| Picking favorites from "My Everything" is difficult. From polished stem to gleaming stern, it exudes warm beauty with its seamless blends of R & B, jazz, pop and gospel. "Close Your Eyes" is particularly dreamy; the Babyface duet "Like You Used to Do" smolders with regret.
The time is definitely right to get caught up again in the rapture of Anita Baker. And Baker knows from change. It is what temporarily derailed her career. Life got in the way: Dying parents, growing kids, a marriage on the rocks and then suddenly revitalized. The music didnīt come, she has said. Priorities had to be set, and she set them firmly at home, as she explains in the treacly Men in My Life: "My timeīs in such demand / From sunrise down to sunset... / Cause the three men in my life / Theyīre my husband and my sons yes."
These are the experiences that season an artist, give her something to say, flavor the music with a wisdom wrought from experience. At 46, Baker isnīt the same person she was when she released her first solo album, The Songstress, at 25. But sheīs got the same voice, and a voice like that deserves better material. So does the listener.
Happy People You've Saved Kelly
With all of the recent legal and moral troubles R. Kelly has been facing, it seems only right that his latest album would celebrate the happier things in life.
 What better way to confront the negatives then to bask in the positives? Arguably the current king of R&B music (Usherīs youth makes him the Prince, for now), R. Kelly has been churning out hit after hit, either writing, producing, or featuring on damn near every hip-hop song gracing TV screens and radio airwaves. Ready to center the attention on himself again, he has crafted an uplifting two-disc affair, Happy People / U Saved Me. Separated into one disc for the partygoers and one for the spiritually-guided, R. Kelly abandons his freakier tales this time around, a point that may disappoint some at first. After one listen to the feel-good vibes on Happy People / U Saved Me, though, his musical genius should win over the unhappy few.
While Happy People stays true to its central theme, the step-sound begins to wear thin as the tracks progress. Good times are always welcome, but tracks like "Itīs Your Birthday" and "Steppinī Into Heaven" sound too similar in both production and vocal delivery. "Happy People" sounds like a carbon copy of "Step In The Name Of Love (Remix)," and only brings closer attention to the resemblance in sound that dominates the first disc of this double-album.
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