When everyone was claiming that hip-hop was dead, or dying, on life support or suffering in some way about three years ago I was watching R&B slip away. What happened in R&B that took the soul out the beat? It was as if the pop explosion of the late 90’s rolled over and began to suck in the R&B artist… there just seemed to be a lack of soul, passion, love songs, ballads, and real singers (I mean people that can BLOW not Ciara or Chris Brown). I love Christina Aguilera but it struck me as odd that “Back to Basics” was one of the best R&B albums of 2006 (no knock though, it was an amazing album). Do not get me wrong there are artists who hold strong to their R&B roots but little attention or not enough exposure until they come out with “cross-over” or pop hit. Now let’s say you’re thinking about the question that I’m posing regarding the state of R&B and you don’t agree that Chrisette Michele, Ryan Leslie, Melonie Fiona, Solange Knowles, Robin Thicke, Ne-Yo, Trey Songz, Jennifer Husdon and a few other relatively new comers are reviving a genre that fell upon hard times… then tell me who was holding it down for R&B in let’s 2006 and the three preceeding years.
I’m happy to say that R&B is coming back and Alicia Keys, John Legend, and Musiq aren’t the only ones making love songs nowadays. Amongst the mundaness that has taken over the artist in the industry today I’m realizing that the new trend is to be different which unfurtunately results in everyone being the same… There are a lot of new talents coming up and I’m hoping that ten years from now I’ll still be excited about the music industry as I am now.
BUT for the time being I’ll put up a few new R&B songs I heard today.
Ryan Leslie – You’re Not My Girl
Melonie Fiona – You Stop My Heart
Melonie Fiona – Walk On By
Melonie Fiona – Magic
Mario – More Than Friends
NiaFree
Following the untimely death of the great Michael Jackson, it was expected that fans would come out of the woodwork to stock up on Mike’s albums and music. Just as expected Michael Jackson (already the undisputed King of Pop) proved himself to be the King again. The preliminary sales numbers from the Nielsen SoundScan reveals that nine out of the top ten spots of Billboards Top Pop Catalog Albums chart will be held by Michael Jackson related projects. Michael has a record eight of the top ten spots and the Jackson 5 holds the ninth. Collectively, Michael Jackson’s solo albums sold 415,000 copies the past week with 58% of them being digital sales. For more details and a report of the countless Billboard records broken by Michael Jackson this past week 
Everyone was wondering why Blueprint 3 continued to be delayed and I’m sure the world was shocked when Jay-Z bought out of his contract with Def Jam before releasing the highly anticipated album… Well “Blueprint 3″ will be released on September 11th (exactly 8 years after the release of “Blueprint”) through Jay-Z’s new Roc Nation imprint. The “Blueprint 3″ album will be distributed through Atlantic but the other artsist and Roc Nation works will be distributed through Sony. For more details 
It was reported a while back that Universal Motown had won the bidding war for hip-hop’s next big thing, Drake. Unfortunately (for them) they came close but no cigar. Drake has signed with Lil Wayne’s Young Money imprint and will be distributed through Universal Republic. Drake’s highly anticipated major label debut, “Thank Me Later,” is scheduled to be released later this year. For the full story 
As we all patiently wait for the August 4th release of Trey Songz’ third studio album, READY, he gives us a little something to hold us over for the next month. The new King of Remixes has released Anticipation which is ironically all original songs… 12 good tracks and I won’t go into a detailed description of the mixtape simply because I feel that his own description is much better than mine could ever be. Thus, below I’ve posted what Trey said on his blog… F.Y.I the Prince fan in me loves the “Purple Rain” inspired “Yo Side of the Bed” (its no “Purple Rain” by far though.. but its cool).