Contemporary R&B is a popular music genre that combines rhythm and blues with elements of pop, soul, funk, hip hop, and electronic music.
Usher was cited by Billboard as the no. 1 Hot 100 artist of the 2000s decade, with 7 number-one singles that accumulated 42 weeks at the top.
Alicia Keys ranked fifth on Billboard Artist of the Decade list. "No One" ranks No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 songs of the decade.
Beyoncé was named by Billboard the most successful female act of the 2000s.
Image: Michael Jackson 1984
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 music ... [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".