As President of Motown Data, Kedar Massenburg had a expertise for making a splash from 1997 to 2004. Like a sure UK Prime Minister-in-waiting within the Nineties, Massenburg knew all concerning the energy of branding. For Tony Blair, this was ‘New Labour’, whereas for Massenburg it was ‘neo soul’.
After all, it’s attainable that had the self-described ‘advertising genius’ not dreamed up the identify, the music popping out of Motown and different Black labels within the second half of the 90s might need merely discovered itself within the modern R&B or soul sections of HMV.
However because it was, Massenburg fabricated a wholly new classification. “When it comes to advertising right this moment, there’s the necessity to categorise music for customers so that they know what they’re getting,” he informed Billboard journal in 2002. “For lack of a distinct time period, I coined ‘neo soul.’”
It was left for others to nail down what made neo soul completely different from new jack swing, R&B or progressive soul.
“Although it’s roughly analogous to modern R&B,” writes AllMusic, “neo soul artists pay extra devotion to the period of basic soul, usually looking for a sound and a mode of songwriting with few concessions to occasions within the music world post-1975.”
Masterclass, in the meantime, describes it as “a sub-genre of up to date R&B that merges the basic soul sounds of Stax and Motown Data with grooves borrowed from hip-hop, rock, funk and digital music.”
Neo soul’s interval within the solar was temporary. As Massenburg defined in 2002: “Lots of people don’t just like the time period as a result of, whenever you classify music, it turns into a fad, which tends to go away.”
And positive sufficient, a lot of its greatest names – from D’Angelo to Maxwell to Erykah Badu to Lauryn Hill – both fell from favour or exited stage left.
Massenburg himself departed Motown to type his wine firm, Kedar Drinks.
There have been a number of albums for the reason that style’s heyday that hark again to its sound – Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange and Alicia Keys’ As I Am amongst them – however largely neo soul is a style caught in amber.
Thirty years on from its zenith, neo soul isn’t new anymore. Nonetheless, few genres encapsulate an period just like the acts coated right here.
