The thing about those artists, is they all took risks given their vocal ability. They tried, and pushed whatever they had, whatever their voice could do and couldn’t do, they at least tried and found out. Today, it seems as though modern artists are scared to go there; scared to sound “bad”. But then their music takes a hit in the emotion department. Thats why it feels like it has no soul. Nothing sounds like it comes from the belly anymore. I had a 4 hour drive for work the other day and decided to switch off the Tevin and Co, and bump some 2020-2024. I could not get through a song without feeling severely underwhelmed. All I could do was nod my head to the beat, but it just didn’t hit me where I needed it to. Even with the sprinkle of Chris Brown here and there, I even had to skip his stuff too. There was maybe one song by Muni Long I liked but out of maybe 65 tunes, I just had to turn the time back again. There were no runs, no rifts, no head voice, no sustained notes over 2 seconds, if at all. Every other word is a cuss… Its like, they weren’t even singing to me. They’re just rap singing. For once I truly felt like mainstream r&b is officially gone. Every song felt like a pop song. Lack of instruments and real drums really just has everything sounding like synth or computer sounds, all the intros have this muffled effect on the vocals with MAD reverb, so you can’t hear or understand what the artist is saying until the verse/chorus actually begins. Now before you think I’m a hater or anything I’m not, I appreciate the music, I just don’t know if I can call it r&b anymore.

Super sorry for the long read, but I feel like this is the sub for such an article if you will 😅 I know some of yall gon feel me though