R&B.
Rhythm, soul, and feeling.

Babyface and Daryl Simmons wrote 'End of the Road' for the 1992 Boomerang soundtrack while both were going through divorces. Boyz II Men recorded all their vocals in a single three-hour Philadelphia session, and the song spent a then-record 13 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, surpassing both the Hot 100-era record held by Olivia Newton-John and a pre-Hot 100 mark set by Elvis Presley in 1956.

Parliament's Mothership Connection (1975) was the first record to unite Bootsy Collins, Maceo Parker, and Fred Wesley, all former James Brown JBs alumni, alongside keyboardist Bernie Worrell, producing Parliament's first platinum album and a defining text of Afrofuturist funk.

On June 17, 1967, Otis Redding performed a rain-shortened, five-song set at the Monterey Pop Festival backed by Booker T. and the M.G.'s, introducing deep Southern soul to the largest white audience of his career. The set ran Shake, Respect, I've Been Loving You Too Long, Satisfaction, and Try a Little Tenderness, a crossover that was real, earned, and tragically cut short six months later.

Chic's third album, Risqué, recorded at the Power Station in 1979 with engineer Bob Clearmountain, built its sound around Bernard Edwards' bass as the primary melodic voice — a structural decision that sent ripples through hip-hop, new wave, and house music for decades.

Made in Lagos is remembered largely through "Essence" and its Billboard chart history, but Wizkid and executive producer P2J built something more deliberate: a 14-track Lagos-Caribbean synthesis featuring Burna Boy, Skepta, H.E.R., Damian Marley, and Tems, grounded in live instrumentation, patient sequencing, and a mid-tempo confidence that reached number one on the Billboard World Albums chart and earned a Grammy nomination on its own terms.

SZA's "Good Days," released Christmas Day 2020 via Top Dawg Entertainment and RCA, took two years to complete from first session to release, built from a guitar loop by Los Hendrix and shaped by SZA's 2020 grief into a private mantra that became her first solo top-ten Billboard Hot 100 hit.

Released on December 2, 2003, The Diary of Alicia Keys is a record that moves between soul, R&B, hip-hop, and classical music with the ease of someone who grew up hearing all of them at once. Almost entirely written and produced by Keys herself, with key contributions from Kerry Brothers Jr., Kanye West, and Easy Mo Bee, the album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Album. Its four singles, including the Kanye West-co-produced "You Don't Know My Name" and the Tony! Toni! Toné!-featuring "Diary," remain among the defining R&B recordings of the 2000s.

Boyz II Men recorded 'End of the Road' in a single three-hour session in 1992, and its 13-week run at number one rests on one structural decision: breaking the group's signature all-voices-together approach to let each member sing individually on the verses, saving the full four-part harmony for the chorus and building contrast that makes the reunion land.

Between 1971 and 1985, Dayton, Ohio's factory-town economy and fierce high-school music culture produced the Ohio Players, Slave, Zapp, Lakeside, and a dozen more funk acts, building a catalog so heavily sampled it became the sonic foundation of West Coast hip-hop.

C'est Chic, released August 11, 1978, was born from a New Year's Eve humiliation outside Studio 54 and recorded at Power Station in New York with a cast including Tony Thompson, Luther Vandross, and engineer Bob Clearmountain. The album's origin story, its personnel, and its emotional undertow of longing and exclusion explain why it became the defining document of an era.