Do You Miss ‘90s R&B, or Do You Miss Being Told What to Love?
The nostalgia feels righteous—until you realize it’s mostly a performance. We keep mourning a Golden Age we could rediscover at any time if we actually listened instead of scrolling.
The debate that will not die—Is R&B dead?—is less a musical inquiry than a mirror. It’s a cocktail of memory, impatience, and algorithm fatigue disguised as cultural critique. Ask any group of people to recall their favorite R&B moments and watch them lean into memories of harmonies, slow-burning bass lines, and melodic singers who filled up whole rooms with their voices. Then ask those same people to name two contemporary R&B artists outside the Top 40, and the room suddenly empties. For years, social media has been littered with posts declaring that they’re “so sick of Trap-R&B” and whisper singers, that the “real singers” need to come to the front of the line. The complaints aren’t baseless—contemporary mainstream R&B does lean heavily on software-driven production and Autotune, *cough* Afrobeats *cough*, and others point out that many new songs sound homogeneous. But nostalgia has become a performance. We lament the absence of complex harmonies as we scroll past albums by singers who sweat over instrumentation and breath control. We insist on having melody back, but we want it delivered by the same machine that turned R&B into background music.
Every generation romanticizes its soundtrack, but the current longing for ‘90s R&B feels uniquely out of proportion because of what happened in the interim. Ten years ago, streaming promised a democratized utopia: infinite music at our fingertips and the end of gatekeepers. By 2025, that promise has curdled into fatigue. To stream is to delegate listening to an algorithm. These so-called fans have become so accustomed to being told what fits their mood that they “forget what music they actually like” and no longer feel the thrill of discovery. A survey of music listening habits shows that personalized “For You” playlists and TikTok feeds now drive discovery among 16-to-24-year-olds, while radio and recommendations from friends have dropped precipitously. The hyper-personalization of algorithmic playlists creates micro-genres and isolates listeners; everyone hears a bespoke mix, but there’s little shared experience. The same article warns that these systems encourage passive discovery—the algorithm slides songs into your life, you listen once, and move on. It is hard to believe you’re missing something when the machine is always sending something new.
The result is an odd laziness dressed up as high standards. People insist that modern R&B has lost its soul, but they rarely seek it out. When music discovery fragments and becomes more passive, older fans who don’t invest time in exploring new artists conclude that “R&B is dead,” and younger listeners express their tastes through nostalgic memes rather than listening. Meanwhile, the same streaming culture that flattened R&B into “trap-soul” often flattens its critics: complaining about whisper-singing becomes a way to signal that one remembers the past, not a call to action.
Nostalgia isn’t just about songs here. It’s about an infrastructure that no longer exists. In the ‘90s, Black radio, magazines, clubs, and church basements functioned as curators. You could dislike a trend and still trust that taste was being shepherded by someone who loved the music. Today, as one media researcher notes, songs spike on TikTok then quickly burn out on streaming; when radio finally picks them up, they experience a second life. Radio remains a rare human element in music curation, and its conservatism sometimes extends the life of songs. But streaming is instantaneous, and the algorithm is impatient. When the machine decides you’re in the mood for trap drums and reverb, you must exit the app to prove it wrong.
This is where the irony lies: many of the singers we claim to miss are alive, well, and making records, but they rarely trend on the platforms that promise endless discovery. The algorithm will feed you an influencer’s lip-synced clip of a ‘90s ballad before it recommends Cleo Sol’s latest album. Cleo Sol, a London-born singer associated with the collective SAULT, sold out Radio City Music Hall and the Hollywood Bowl on her first U.S. tour without the scaffolding of a hit single. She works intuitively, not by metrics, and performs with an eleven-piece band and backing vocalists. The musicality is striking: live percussion, horns, and three voices moving like one. Obviously, people compare her to early Sade because there is space in her songs for instruments to breathe. She doesn’t chase the algorithm, so the algorithm rarely introduces her to new listeners. You have to look.
The same goes for The Amours, sisters Jakiya Ayanna and Shaina Aisha. They grew up singing in church and in D.C.’s youth ensemble programs. As background vocalists for PJ Morton, they learned the architecture of chords and groove. Their 2025 album Girls Will Be Girls draws on those roots, with stacked harmonies and a warm, mid-tempo palette. In interviews, they talk about reclaiming the spotlight and telling women’s stories. But you have to get past the noise of playlist covers to hear those stories. Streaming doesn’t reward slow-burning records about growth and complexity, but rewards songs that fit into a mood playlist and hold your attention for forty-five seconds. The Amours’ voices aren’t whispers. They’re grown women breathing into a microphone. You have to seek them out.
Elmiene, a British-Sudanese singer who emerged in the wake of neo-soul, has become something of a cult figure. Rolling Stone UK described his sound as a mix of D’Angelo’s fluidity and his own introspection; his breakthrough track “Golden” accompanied Virgil Abloh’s final Louis Vuitton show. He performs with a live band and is known to sing obscure R&B records between his own songs. He doesn’t care whether his songs fit into a “chill vibes” playlist. Instead, he uses his stage as a history lesson: if you know, you know. Yet the algorithm’s categories—“chill R&B,” “bedroom soul,” “Alt R&B”—rarely surface his music to people who might have loved Maxwell or Bilal. Without radio or television appearances to anchor him in the public consciousness, Elmiene exists like a secret that must be shared by word of mouth. Nostalgia demands “more singers like Maxwell”; when a new one arrives, it shrugs because he’s not in the feed.
Ayoni, the Barbados-born, Berkeley-educated singer-songwriter, embodies the R&B listener’s supposed wish list: a wide vocal range, self-produced compositions, and songs that draw from pop, folk, electronic, and gospel influences. She plays piano and guitar, writes her own music, and refuses to be constrained by genre labels. In interviews, she has said she avoids the R&B label because it limits perceptions of her work. When her project Iridescent arrived in 2019, some fans discovered it by accident while searching for something else. Her songs will not appear on a trap-soul playlist because they don’t fit that mood. They require patience, and patience is not what streaming is designed to cultivate. So Ayoni remains in the margins, her voice capable of knocking you over but rarely trending.
KIRBY, who calls herself the “granddaughter of soul,” also offers what nostalgic listeners claim to crave. Raised in Eudora, Mississippi, she grew up singing in church and learning from a musical family. Her 2025 album Miss Black America is built on live horns, gospel choirs, and Southern syncopation. The production breathes; you hear handclaps, laughter, and deep breaths in the spaces. The songs honor her grandmother, a midwife and community leader. KIRBY has written hits for pop superstars, but her own work is intentionally rooted in family and history. The record isn’t an algorithmic playlist but a journey through Black identity and Southern legacy. Yet you’d hardly know it unless you were pointed there by a friend or by the rare human in an algorithmic curation system.
Durand Bernarr is another case study in the disconnect between longing and listening. Out Magazine describes him as genre-bending and beloved by Earth, Wind & Fire and Erykah Badu. His music spans neo-soul, funk, jazz, and even acoustic experiments, and he delights in unusual instruments. Bernarr grew up on tour with Earth, Wind & Fire thanks to his father, a sound engineer. He is fluent in R&B but refuses to be boxed in; he sings opera, rock, and country. His 2024 visual EP En Route takes listeners on a road trip through multiple genres. In other words, he is the living embodiment of “when singers could really sing.” But he doesn’t fall neatly into algorithmic categories, so he remains outside the scroll. People ask where the showmen are; he’s on tour. They’d know if they looked up from their feeds.
And then there’s Alex Isley, descendant of the legendary Isley Brothers. Her EP When was described by Revolt as a moody, slow-burning return to sensual R&B with textured, timeless production. She exercises complete control over her music and emphasizes community and collaboration with other women in R&B. Her voice is a soft instrument, reminiscent of ‘90s quiet-storm but with modern clarity. She isn’t chasing radio hits or trending tags. She is building a catalog that makes you lean in. The streaming platforms file her under “smooth R&B” and move on.
Artists like Destin Conrad and Alex Isley have recorded some of the best R&B duets in recent years. If you look to listen to others recommending it, you'll find praise for the “dreamy vocal chemistry” on their song “Same Mistake.” Kelela, Sampha, Ari Lennox, SiR, Ego Ella May, and a hundred other artists are crafting music steeped in classic R&B yet freed from formula. But the conversation about the genre’s demise continues. It’s easier to tweet about missing ‘90s R&B than to click through a catalog that spans continents.
Why does this happen? Part of the problem is structural. Major labels abandoned R&B infrastructure in the 2010s to chase streaming’s more lucrative genres. As The Blues Project notes, older fans have trouble finding R&B because the genre and media landscape have become fragmented. Another part is psychological. Nostalgia is a safe performance: you can signal taste by referencing Mary J. Blige without risking being wrong about a new artist. And the algorithmic world rewards familiar signals. Posts about Aaliyah, 112, or SWV are more likely to go viral than posts about The Amours or KIRBY. Likes and shares act as validation, a kind of parasocial applause. We express our love for R&B to each other rather than seeking the music itself.
In this performance, taste becomes something you outsource. Streaming services have turned themselves into mood generators; people play them to fill silence, not to be transformed. When a researcher describes algorithmic playlists as encouraging passive discovery and leaving users dependent on recommendations, they are describing a slow erosion of agency. The more we rely on playlists and viral clips to tell us what to hear, the less we remember how to follow a melody from its beginning to its end. This is why modern R&B often feels like an endless loop of half-finished interludes: the industry is responding to our short attention spans. Many new R&B releases sound half-baked because they are designed to serve the algorithm’s hunger, not your soul. Artists are told to release constantly, and we don’t think it’s a smart move. Fans complain about the brevity, but keep rewarding the frequency.
Nostalgia can be nourishing when it leads you to seek the roots of contemporary music. But too often, nostalgia operates as a call to stop listening altogether. Consider how quickly the “R&B is dead” discourse flares up whenever a big-name artist or another veteran mentions the genre. The conversation rarely features songwriters, musicians, or younger singers doing the work. Instead, it’s an echo chamber of disappointment. It’s as if people miss being told what to love more than they miss the sound itself.
Taste used to be an expedition. You followed liner notes, traced samples back to original records, and met people at shows. Today’s taste is an algorithmic recommendation plus a memory of how music once made you feel. There’s irony here. The same listeners who celebrate the days when A&R reps scouted the church choir for a voice now rely on hashtags and trending sounds to do the scouting for them. The digital platforms promise to show us everything, yet they show us only what we’ve already shown interest in. They flatten differences and then wonder why everything sounds the same.
The quiet death of taste doesn’t happen all at once. It happens as we scroll past a clip of Cleo Sol leading an eleven-piece band, complaining that no one sings like they used to. It happens when we share a meme about ‘90s R&B harmonies while The Amours are harmonizing in a small venue down the street. It occurs when algorithm fatigue makes us trust curated playlists over our own ears. The irony is that the music we mourn never actually disappeared; our attention did. To resuscitate taste, we have to exit the feed, attend a show, buy a record, follow a singer we’ve never heard of, and let a melody unsettle our mood. We have to accept that liking a post is not the same as loving a song. Only then will the performance of nostalgia yield to the practice of listening.