When hip hop ate R&B

An Introduction to an investigation.

I laid in bed the other night listening to classic slow jams by the Chi-Lites (“Oh Girl”), the Delphonics (“Hey Love”) and the Temptations (“Just My Imagination”) and then a smattering of early ‘80s tracks by Aretha (“Who’s Zoomin’ Who”), Sade (“Sweetest Taboo”) and Stephanie Mills (“Your Putting a Rush On Me”). These songs traversed the era when black popular music production changed radically from live session cats created tracks in the studio to when drum machines, synthesizers and highly processed vocals recordings (with the breath taken out) became the new norm. But through this period of the ‘60s into the ‘80s the singer was the central figures in this musical culture.

The (super) human voice of black singers — male, female, gay or straight — defined soul/R&B recordings whether they were backed by James Jamerson’s fluid bass lines or Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis’ keyboard driven arrangements. The voice was always (to paraphrase Leroi Jones aka Amiri Baraka) the ever changing same of black popular music. Of course hip hop altered that dynamic, replacing the singer with the rapper or MC as sun around which the black masses circled. The singer was no longer the sun but was now a planet and, in many cases, merely a moon.

As I lay in bed with all these great sounds filling my ears I tried to recall when the shift happened. Was there a year? A month? A defining moment when the singer gave way to the MC? When hip hop swallowed R&B? The culture was at a turning point and then tipped over?

Since the evening I’ve looked back at charts, interviews and stories, coming up with a series of answers that have somewhat quenched my thirst. It goes back to the mid-90s and a series of records and decisions that changed black music. In 2021 I’ll be exploring this question in a series of essays that will be available on a paid subscription only basis starting in late January. I’ll give folks on my list a head’s up when I’ll be starting and have my paid subscription set up. Right now the working title is ‘When hip hop ate R&B’ but, hopefully, I’ll eventually come up with something more elegant than that.