Antonio Marquis "L.A." Reid is an American record executive, A&R representative, and record producer. He has served as the chairman and CEO of Epic Records and The Island Def Jam Music Group, as well as the president and CEO of Arista Records. He co-founded the record label Hitco Entertainment in 2017, which was sold to Concord in 2022.
Reid in 2011
Reid with Mariah Carey at The Emancipation of Mimi release party in 2005
Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated within African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to African Americans, at a time when "rocking, jazz based musicĀ ... [with a] heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular.
In the commercial rhythm and blues music typical of the 1950s through the 1970s, the bands usually consisted of a piano, one or two guitars, bass, drums, one or more saxophones, and sometimes background vocalists. R&B lyrical themes often encapsulate the African-American history and experience of pain and the quest for freedom and joy, as well as triumphs and failures in terms of societal racism, oppression, relationships, economics, and aspirations.
Big Joe Turner in 1955
Louis Jordan in New York City, c. July 1946
Bo Diddley's "Bo Diddley beat" is a clave-based motif.
Ruth Brown was known as the "Queen of R&B".