To accompany this article, Adam Bradley created a playlist of the songs that define R&B’s new era.
THE R&B SINGER-SONGWRITER Muni Long has a voice that people say could sing the dictionary and they’d still listen. In 2007, as a teen growing up in Gifford, Fla., she put that claim to the test, recording a five-minute YouTube clip in which she sings from Webster’s II New Riverside Dictionary (“aardvark, aardwolf, Aaron …”) to the tune of Fergie’s “Glamorous” (2006). That playful stunt, along with a handful of covers, caught the attention of Capitol Records. Under her given name, Priscilla Renea, she recorded her 2009 debut, “Jukebox,” an album of pop originals that earned good reviews but modest sales. By her 22nd birthday, she no longer had a record deal. Reinventing herself as a songwriter, she spent the next decade building a chameleonic career, writing the 2013 global hit “Timber” for Pitbull and Kesha, as well as songs for Miranda Lambert, Rihanna, Madonna, Sabrina Carpenter and dozens of others.
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My Favorite Song | R&B’s New Guard
H.E.R., Coco Jones, Victoria Monét and Muni Long pay tribute to the women singer-songwriters of the 1990s and early 2000s.
Hey, I’m H.E.R. It’s your girl Victoria Monét. My name is Muni Long. Hey, y’all. It’s Coco Jones, and my favorite song is “When You Touch Me” by Brandy. And my favorite ‘90s R&B song is “Weak” by SWV. ... is “At Your Best” by Aaliyah. ... is “If I Ain’t Got You,” by Alicia Keys. I think Brandy has influenced my music, definitely, when it comes to the creative ad libs. (SINGING) “Really miss you, babe. And the way you touched me. I can’t hardly wait ‘til you touch me.” I’m like, that’s true, girl. That sleep, it be gone when you’re really thinking about somebody. Everything about “At Your Best—” the way she’s singing. She doesn’t really get credit for being the vocalist that she was. But that song is really hard to sing. There’s a lot of jumping between octaves. (SINGING) “You’re a positive motivating force within my life. Should you ever feel the need to wonder why.” Music is like a smell. Like, when you smell something, and it takes you right back to that day. I can hear “If I Ain’t Got You” and remember my dad kind of teaching me how to play it. (SINGING) “Some people think that the physical things define what’s within.” Every artist is always doing the work of tweaking and opening the door just a little bit more for the people who come behind them. Maybe Ella Fitzgerald paved the way for Chaka. Maybe Chaka paved the way for Whitney. Maybe Whitney paved the way for Beyoncé. I used to fall asleep to “Miseducation” and “Who is Jill Scott?” Those were my favorite albums. We were just listening to “Got ‘til It’s Gone” by Janet Jackson. “I think ‘90s, early 2000s R&B, it was such an innovative time. And I really feel like that was some of the best songwriting I’ve seen, personally. (SINGING) “And I’ve been there before, but that life’s a bore. So full of the superficial.” [LAUGHS]
But Long never gave up on her own voice. In 2018, she released a slept-on country album. Then, a couple of years later, she found her way to R&B. “I think it was the only genre I hadn’t explored,” says the artist, now 36. She devised a new stage name: Muni, from the Sanskrit for “sage,” a seeker of self-knowledge, filtered through a line from the rapper 2 Chainz’s 2012 song “I’m Different” — “hair long, money long.” That juxtaposition of spirituality and the streets animates the two albums that she’s released under her chosen name: “Public Display of Affection: The Album” (2022) and “Revenge” (2024). On songs like 2021’s “Hrs & Hrs,” her breakout hit, and 2023’s “Made for Me,” Long sings about love, sex and heartache with a passion reminiscent of 1990s slow jams. “R&B hasn’t been at the forefront in over 20 years,” she says. Now’s the time to “help mold a new era.”
That new R&B era is here, with women artists leading the way. Born between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, this generation of artists came of age when the music’s stars needed no last name: Whitney and Mariah, Brandy and Monica, Aaliyah and Beyoncé, all chart-topping performers with gifted, even generational, voices who steered R&B through a period defined by male-dominated rap. Today’s stars — SZA and Summer Walker, Normani and Arlo Parks, Raye and Tems, to name just a few, along with the women photographed here — are defying industry formats and fans’ expectations. Some are reviving R&B’s gospel roots, while others are claiming new sonic territory by hybridizing with hip-hop, curating global rhythms and securing the genre’s rightful claim to pop.
“R&B is pop music,” Long says — a necessary reminder, given that the music industry has co-opted R&B’s most appealing qualities while relegating the genre itself to the margins. “They took the sounds and they took the swag and they made it mainstream,” she adds. As a consequence, some of R&B’s brightest stars deny the label for fear that it might restrict their audience or, worse, suggest capitulation to de facto racial segregation. “Any music I do will easily and quickly be categorized as R&B because I’m a Black woman,” the 26-year-old singer and actress Chlöe Bailey told Nylon last year. Listen to her sophomore album, “Trouble in Paradise” (2024), and you’ll hear shimmering pop production, booming hip-hop bass lines and the syncopated log drums of Afrobeats. Above all, though, you’ll hear her powerful voice, heir to a distinct tradition that she’s hesitant to claim.
