54 albums · 1957–2024

R&B, from rhythm and blues to quiet storm, new jack swing, nineties R&B and alternative R&B

· 2 min read · by 1001 Albums

Mary J. Blige in a long black dress singing into a microphone with one arm raised, before a screen of pink rays and a row of American flags
Ray Charles in dark glasses playing the alto saxophone on a stage before his big band's music stands, photographers and listeners in front, in a black and white photographSZA with long curly hair and closed eyes singing into a microphone, in a black jacket, under stage lights
Mary J. Blige at the Neighborhood Ball in Washington, D.C., in January 2009. Photo: Donna Lou Morgan, U.S. Navy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. · Ray Charles at a night concert in the RAI building in Amsterdam in May 1963. Photo: Hugo van Gelderen / Anefo, Nationaal Archief, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · SZA on her Ctrl tour at REBEL in Toronto in August 2017. Photo: Erin Cazes for The Come Up Show, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Rhythm and blues was the name Billboard gave in 1949 to its charts of Black popular music in America, which had until then been called race records. In the fifties it meant the jump blues of Louis Jordan, the records Ruth Brown made for Atlantic and the gospel-shaped songs of Ray Charles. Soul grew out of it in the sixties. In 1975 Smokey Robinson's A Quiet Storm gave its name to a radio format of slow, smooth songs, and from the eighties R&B came to mean a polished, produced music of its own.

The list starts with Louis Jordan, Ray Charles, Ruth Brown, Dinah Washington and Etta James. Luther Vandross, Anita Baker and Freddie Jackson sang the quiet storm of the eighties, and Janet Jackson made Control with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis in Minneapolis. Teddy Riley's new jack swing set R&B to hip hop beats, on records by Guy, Keith Sweat and Bobby Brown. In the nineties come Boyz II Men, Jodeci, Mary J. Blige, TLC, Brandy and Aaliyah, and D'Angelo's Brown Sugar, one of the first records of neo-soul; in Britain Soul II Soul and later Craig David. After 2000 come Alicia Keys, Beyoncé, Usher and Ciara, and from 2011 a slower and darker alternative R&B with The Weeknd, Frank Ocean, FKA twigs, SZA and Solange. Later come Jorja Smith, Cleo Sol, Steve Lacy, Victoria Monét and Tems from Nigeria.

The list has 54 records from 1957 to 2024. It leaves out the soul and funk of the sixties and seventies, which have lists of their own, the singles on which most early rhythm and blues came out, R&B sung in languages other than English, and the albums Deezer does not have, among them Ruth Brown's first album of 1957 as it came out. R. Kelly's albums are left out too. About 47 hours of music, 5 days of a few records each.

By genre

Soul & R&B 61%Pop 12%Hip hop 9%Other 18%
  • Soul & R&B 61%
  • Pop 12%
  • Hip hop 9%
  • Other 18%

The genres named most: contemporary r&b, r&b, pop, hip hop, soul, new jack swing.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 5 countries: United States 44, United Kingdom 5, Canada 2, France 2, Nigeria 1. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1950s

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

The 2020s

More lists

Lists of Genres first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.