Is This Your King?

By:Pretty Riot

Who really deserves to be crowned the King of R&B? Find out on the next episode of Dragon Ball Z. Or by reading the short offering below.

For the past week, the world of R&B has been in a complete and total uproar after Cash Money signee, Jacquees, released a now viral video, claiming to be the King of R&B for this generation. While Jacquees has had a pretty good year musically, with record high streaming numbers and a pretty catchy remix of Ella Mai’s, Trip, crowning him the king of R&B is a bit far fetched. I’d say that Jacquees is the king of remixes, he’s flipped a number of songs and made some pretty dope alterations to them, but that’s about it. I applaud his confidence but he had a little too much dip on his chip with this one. 

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A post shared by The Shade Room (@theshaderoom) on Dec 9, 2018 at 10:49am PST

Needless to say the video sparked conversations between music lovers, bloggers, and tweeters from coast to coast who seem to have had a field day debating on who actually deserves to be crowned the current king of R&B. Jacquees quickly became the laughing stock and the bud of many jokes on twitter throughout the course of the week. While the general consensus agrees that the king of R&B is NOT Jacquees, there has still been a huge debacle about who is worthy of the title. Many major music icons joined the conversation, including Tyrese, Tank, J. Holiday and Eric Bellinger, all extremely talented R&B singers, while each of them had their own take on who the King of R&B is. Here's a look at some of my favorite and most interesting comments made throughout the debate, many of these comments took the debate to another level and while I may not completely agree, valid points were made. 

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King of R&B pic.twitter.com/DCUCDFjCOY

— Diddy (@Diddy) December 11, 2018

Honestly I don't think there is a king of r&b right now. Anyone consistently dominating the charts, selling out arenas, etc, a la Usher at his prime. Not a comment on quality. I think the throne is open right now.

— John Legend (@johnlegend) December 10, 2018

So, who takes the crown? Who is worthy of such an honorable title? Before any names are thrown out, I think it’s pretty important to establish what criteria and credentials the king of R&B should actually possess, let’s begin there shall we? The ruler of the throne should obviously have the pipes, pure vocal range and ability, with a solid catalog of music to match, along with longevity in their career with consistent releases and should also dominate in sales to top it off. Performance skills are also necessary because our King has to be able to captivate the crowd while on tour. So take vocal ability + longevity & consistency + sales + performance skills and boom, there’s a solid recipe for the king.

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Let’s note that Jacquees stated that he was the R&B  king of THIS generation, meaning there has been many generations of kings. Marvin Gaye dominated the genre in the 70’s, Luther Vandross in the 80’s, R. Kelly in the 90’s, Usher in the early 2000’s and Chris Brown currently reigns supreme. I personally did not think there was much debate about it, Chris Brown has been setting the bar very high since his debut at the age of 16, with a number of impressive accolades, sold out tour dates, constant billboard placement, not to mention his extensive catalog including a number of features exercising his true creative ability, and you haven’t truly lived until you’ve seen Chris bust a move on stage during a performance. I could not pen this article and fail to neglect the fact that there are a number of R&B artists that equally compare to him, Miguel, Trey Songz, Ty Dolla $ign, and Frank Ocean definitely gets an honorable mention in my book.

If there’s one thing this stringent debate has really taught us, it’s not who the king of R&B actually is, it’s that R&B is not dead. There have been a number of debates pondering over the current state of R&B and if it's a lost art or not. Personally, I never thought R&B was dead or even dying. I will say that it has been a female dominated genre for quite some time now and as of late, men are making their presence known again within the world of R&B. While the genre has truly evolved and looks and sounds much different than it did in past decades it is not a lost art. With artists such as Brent Faiyaz, Daniel Caesar, Eric Bellinger and Khalid keeping the genre alive, while simultaneously modernizing the sound R&B all together. I'll even  go out on a limb and recognize artists like Bryson Tiller, Tory Lanez and 6LACK for adding a very unique sound to R&B with a crossover of singing and rapping that has created a new lane that caters specifically to that sound and it is currently home to many, many, many hits. Although the sound that they've created differs from the traditional sound of R&B it allows artists to express their creativity in a way that we weren't currently used to. Regardless of where the future of R&B is headed it's alive and well, growing and evolving and Jacquees is not currently sitting on the throne, and probably never will be.