Alicia Keys

Appears on

• Top 6 Contemporary R&B Artists of All Time

  Currently #2 · score 0

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• Usher

  Usher's 2004 album Confessions sold more than 10 million copies in the United States alone, becoming one of the best-selling R&B albums of the 21st century and establishing him as the defining male R&B star of the early 2000s. His combination of technically precise dancing, drawing directly on Michael Jackson's influence, and his smooth, emotionally expressive vocal delivery made Usher one of the most complete R&B performers of his generation, equally regarded for his live performance ability and his studio recordings. Usher's mentorship of younger artists through his own record label, including his early discovery and development of Justin Bieber, extended his industry influence well beyond his own recording career into shaping the subsequent generation of pop and R&B stars. His sustained commercial relevance across more than two decades, adapting his sound across R&B, dance-pop, and hip-hop-influenced production trends while maintaining his core vocal and performance identity, has made Usher one of the most consistently successful R&B artists of the contemporary era.

• John Legend

  John Legend became one of the few entertainers in history to achieve EGOT status, winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award across his career, a rare combination reflecting his work spanning music, film scoring, and stage production simultaneously. His piano-driven, classically influenced R&B songwriting, evident from his 2004 debut album Get Lifted, established Legend as a genre bridge between traditional soul balladry and more contemporary R&B production, drawing comparisons to earlier singer-pianists like Stevie Wonder. Legend's 2016 Academy Award for co-writing "Glory," the theme song for the film Selma addressing the civil rights movement, reflected his continued engagement with socially and politically conscious songwriting alongside his more commercially oriented R&B ballads. His combination of technical musicianship, sustained commercial success, and his rare EGOT achievement across multiple entertainment mediums has made Legend one of the most critically and institutionally recognized R&B artists of his generation.

• Frank Ocean

  Frank Ocean's 2012 album Channel Orange, released alongside his personal essay revealing his first love had been a man, made him one of the first major mainstream R&B artists to openly discuss same-sex attraction, a significant moment for LGBTQ visibility within a genre that had historically offered limited space for that openness. His atmospheric, genre-blending production, incorporating elements of psychedelic rock and ambient music alongside traditional R&B songwriting, distinguished Ocean's sound from more straightforwardly commercial contemporary R&B, and his work is frequently cited as foundational to the subsequent "alternative R&B" movement. Ocean's extended, unexplained absences from public releases and touring, including a four-year gap between Channel Orange and 2016's Blonde, became a defining feature of his public persona, reflecting a deliberate rejection of the conventional album-cycle promotional schedule most major artists follow. His combination of genuine artistic ambition, his significant role in LGBTQ visibility within R&B, and his unconventional relationship to the traditional music industry release cycle have made Ocean one of the most critically influential R&B artists of the 2010s, despite a relatively modest total recorded output.

• SZA

  SZA's 2017 debut album Ctrl became a critical and commercial breakthrough, blending R&B with alternative and indie influences, and its unusually candid, anxious lyrical exploration of insecurity and romantic uncertainty distinguished her songwriting from more conventionally confident R&B lyrical themes. Her 2022 follow-up album SOS spent multiple weeks atop the Billboard 200 and became one of the best-selling R&B albums of the decade, reflecting SZA's growth from a critically acclaimed but commercially modest debut into one of the genre's most dominant contemporary stars. SZA's willingness to publicly discuss anxiety about her own musical output and perfectionism, including lengthy delays between album releases driven by her own self-critical process, gave her a relatable, less polished public persona distinct from more tightly managed pop star images. Her combination of genre-blending production, unusually vulnerable songwriting, and sustained commercial dominance in the early 2020s has made SZA one of the most significant and influential R&B artists of her generation, shaping the sound of numerous subsequent younger artists in the genre.

• The Weeknd

  The Weeknd, born Abel Tesfaye, built his early career through a series of free mixtapes released with minimal promotional information, deliberately maintaining anonymity and mystery around his identity during his earliest rise, a marketing approach that became central to his initial cult following before his mainstream breakthrough. His atmospheric, darkly themed R&B, addressing drug use and toxic relationships with a deliberately bleak emotional tone, established a distinctly moodier alternative to more straightforwardly romantic mainstream R&B, and his sound significantly influenced the broader "alternative R&B" movement of the 2010s. His 2020 album After Hours and its accompanying visual aesthetic, including a recurring bloodied-suit persona across music videos and public appearances, reflected The Weeknd's continued interest in cinematic, conceptually unified visual presentation extending well beyond the music itself. His performance at the Super Bowl LV Halftime Show in 2021, reportedly self-funded at significant personal cost to achieve his specific creative vision, reflected The Weeknd's continued insistence on artistic control, and his combination of atmospheric genre-blending and massive commercial success has made him one of the most significant R&B artists of the 2010s and 2020s.