Something that bothers me in the music world that has existed for decades is how black artists get classified. Basically anyone who sings and is black gets thrown into the R&B and hip-hop categories, even when they clearly are not.

With new albums out this year by fka Twigs, Rochelle Jordan, Sudan Archives, and Erika de Casier, a tweet went semi-viral a few days ago with the four albums mentioned, captioning it “2025 is officially the year of alternative R&B”. I would link it but it’s since been deleted after the response it got, particularly from Rochelle Jordan’s executive producer KLSH:

Numerous black artists have spoken out about this over the years, whether it be SZA or twigs or Drake or Tyler, the Creator or literally any other black artist that has attempted to make any genre besides rap and R&B over the past 30 years.

Ask yourself: how many prominent black musicians can you name that are widely agreed upon to be pop artists? Or alternative artists? Or rock musicians? Or folk artists? Or electronic musicians without the preceding identifier of “alternative R&B/hip-hop” thrown onto the front of it?

I know to some people it doesn’t matter what genres artists are classified under, but to me I find genres to be a very beautiful and important thing. The differences in every style of music are what makes each style unique. If everyone is just making everything all of the time, or if artists are wrongfully being lumped into boxes solely because of the color of their skin, then that beauty is blurred.

Does it bother you at all? Do you think it’s a non-issue? Or do you think that some of the artists mentioned above are correctly classified when it comes to their genres?

yall asking these obviously racist white nationalist ass cacs to listen to and respect black art

f*** them

Yeah it's crazy. And a good point. I actually just started working on a video about the whole "I'm not a rapper, I'm an artist/whatever else" phenomenon and I think there's an aspect of it where black artists are put in a box and feel like they have to say something like that to be taken more seriously / given an opportunity to explore genres in a way that white artists can do without nearly as much scrutiny

Worse is the “rap shouldn’t be about anything but party music” rise that’s happening lately. Fans just keep getting dumber and dumber

But it's especially crazy in the pop world, like Khalid is definitely a pop singer but I just googled him and the genre came up saying R&B / Soul

Had a good discussion about this with the other artists I was on tour with this past summer because we're both late 20s and when we meet younger artists especially white ones we realize that some of them can come up on the internet and find rap music without ever listening to a black rapper. it's crazy

Me n Aquilla talked about this a while ago

Everything is "RnB"

For simple marketing or simple ignorance

The original name for r&b was race music until the industry changed it because it was not politically correct

Tinashe tried to fight this fight a long time ago too

In a lot of cases like that tweet with the 4 albums its just boxing any non white artists into an rnb category. Like the idea of Blue eye soul as a genre doesnt really make sense

But in other cases ngl its just artists wanting to reject their foundation

the "alternative r&b" tag just feels wrong

Rochelle Jordan ain't pop. She's more Electronic than anything.

Same with Kelela

feels more like a trite complaint at this point

like yes it's used to pigeonhole artists of Black descent but also the majority of the time people have an issue is with regard to award categories.

so many of the artists u named def go out their way to make avant garde music anyway so trying to box them into a label by affirming how they're "actually pop" (an incredibly malleable genre descriptor for whatevers hot & radio friendly) is just as bad

por que no los dos? if the artist has an issue or wants to clarifying the music they're making they can speak on it but globalization is occurring on a sonic level as well atp

also think so much of it connotatively has to do with white proximity and appraisal. i've come to love the notion that "r&b" is essentially just a safe haven for Black artists to be revered and respected; i.e. go where ure welcomed. fighting to be seen as this or that when nonBlack audiences dont respect your artistry to see the versatility just seems backwards; (tyla, tyler, twigs, etc)

also aesthetically and songwriting wise i think kelela, sza, erika de casier, etc. have very obvious r&b leanings and influences that to deny it would be a little disingenuous; not to mention the amount of influence r&b and hip hop have had on pop particularly in the last decade. if the rest wanna be seen as pop so be it