The Color White

In today's modern charts, the top 5 positions are held by the most mainstream artists, from the independent charts to the BillBoard charts, and it is the job of record labels to get their artists on as many charts as possible.
Which is the top 5 positions in the R'n'b charts are actually pop songs.
Look away now if you're ig'nant.
Look away if you're stupid.

Contemporary R'n'b is nothing more than Pop music packaged in urban boxes to appeal to people who 1. feel that "pop music" is less credibile and a joke and 2. people who want to feel "hip" and "down with it" by listening to what they feel is r'n'b music.

Record labels have succeeded in convincing the average person that an artist is automatically a r'n'b artist if they are black.
At a time when it wasn't cool to be black, artists as fair and as "European" looking as Mariah Carey decided not to discuss their ethnicities at the risk that they would be seen as being too niche to be mainstream because even though Janet Jackson who is quite chocolate in complexion was owning the charts at the time, she was never recognised as being a black woman because her title as a "Jackson" meant that the color of her skin did not matter. So with the emergence of urban artists like Boyz 2 Men and TLC, black became in vogue- hence the reason for the multitudes of R'n'b groups in the 90s, that's when Mariah decided to remind the world that there was indeed a little cocoa in her milk.

So for a while, black artists and urban music ruled the charts due to the help of Hype Williams and the new image the mainstream were seeing of black artists like Missy Elliot and Aaliyah who had mainstream relevance as well as street credibility. And this formula was adopted by the new group, Destiny's Child who had both girl next door charm, but a "round the way thing girl" thing going on as well.

However with the dominance of teen pop music, it became very difficult for artists who were 100% urban to compete with artists like Britney and Nsync who were shitting on everyone, and so all the smart managers turned their urban artists into "Urban Pop" artists, the pioneers of this genre being Beyonce' and Co, the song Bills Bills Bills being the best example of this.

So the new Millenium saw artists like Boyz 2 Men, Soul 2 Heart and 4Ever fade away into irrelevant obscurity whilst artists who mastered the art of fusing urban with mainstream dominated the pop and r'n'b charts.
Meaning that the biggest selling r'n'b artists were actually pop artists and it didnt help that the most famous black artist actually had white skin.

So Urban music was in trouble. It had no place in modern music, you could either "sell out" and go completely commercial or just sit at home in the middle of your ten kids in the hope somebody covered your song which you wrote a lyric in in the hope you'd make some royalty money from it.

Today- the situation is the same. Kanye West IS a pop artist.
Beyonce' is a POP Icon.
Rihanna is a POP star.
Alicia Keys is a homewrecking, dick chomping, pussy eating bisexual slutwhore.

If you lived an area where urban music was seen as being horrible and distasteful and you were trying to rebel you would go out of your way to listen to what you thought was "urban" music but because you had been raised on pop music you would subconciously gravitate towards music which incorporated both pop and urban but was packaged as if it were urban.


This is why Eminem is still signed. Crazy ass country trash think they're doing something rebellious by listening to him not realising that they are actually his intended audience, it's the reason his hair is bleach blonde, he is mimicking the fact that he, a white man, has been more succesful than black rappers with more credibility.
The blonde hair says "Yeah I'm white, and yeah I may not be as good as my black contemporaries but I'm one of the most celebrated artists in THEIR genre and charts AS WELL as the pop charts."

Could you imagine what would happen if a black girl with dark skin, braids and a thick body decided to become a country artist- she would be rejected because the crossover key only extends to pop music, when was the last time saw you a black heavy metal artist making impact on the charts, but for Caucasian artists the crossover key has no limits, which is why Fergie gets way with being on"R'n'b Compilations" yet you'd be shocked to find Keisha Cole on Pop Compilation.

When it comes to Ciara- she has gone from being a Princess of Urban Pop to being a joke in the Pop world. Princess Harris did not realise that her only and most loyal fans were all followers of modern Urban music which is why when she tried to release a pop album, her first week sales slumped from around 300,000 to 81,000 within the space of two years. Something occured in the minds of her fans which said, "this bitch tried to switch it up without our permission, fuck her," this is why Ciara is officially irrelevant.

But low sales does not mean an artist is irrelevant, because artists like Jill Scott and Kirk Franklin are commercially unsuccesful but are highly respected and appreciated in the genres making them relevant to their genres. The reason Ashanti, Keri Hilson, Mya etc are irrelevant is because not only are they commercially unsuccesful, their music means nothing and changes nothing in their genres whilst Keisha Cole continues to push the boundaries of contemporary r'n'b with every single making her the most relevant artist in contemporary R'n'b.

When it comes to Robyn F, she's never released an R'n'b single, not ever. Which is why she's still signed and that Tearra chick is still releasing singles that don't go anywhere. Rihanan was going to be dropped after her first release, according to her ex business partner, but when her management got hold of SOS ( a song that the POP icon Britney Spears had rejected) the label kept her on realising Rihanna's potential as a pop artist.

Good Girl Gone Bad is as R'n'b as 808s and Heartbreak is Goth Rock. It isn't at all.

Until labels find a way to turn artists like Keisha Cole into top selling artists who actually release R'n'b music then the charts will continue to be dominated by r'n'b stars who are actually pop artists.

Just look at the charts now, i guarantee that you any "r'n'b artist" who is in the top 5 in the Pop charts is also in the top 5 of the R'n'b Charts.