self-segmentation in 2020s R&B: Is Summer Walker Finally Over It?
How notable R&B artists like Summer, Ari Lennox, and Cleo Sol are surviving creative limitations within the streaming ecosystem.
If I asked someone, “What does 2026 R&B sound like?” I expect a mix of answers from purists: it sounds slow, no one can sing, everything is “toxic.” The legendary waymaker Jill Scott said modern R&B is missing real love and humanity in an interview with the Joe Budden Podcast, promoting her latest album To Whom This May Concern, this past month.
All respect to Jill Scott, who has been blessing us with soulful heat for 25 years. But how would most listeners know all that is there in the modern R&B landscape, let alone the true scope of one R&B artist’s range, when current methods of music discovery block the visibility of Black duality in music?
How streaming and radio impact your tastes in R&B
In 2026, most people will find new music through streaming, radio, and social media. But each of these modes is ruled by politics, rules, and user experience randomness that have more to do with profit than presenting you with a range of styles in R&B.
If you’re using auto-generated playlists on streaming sites for discovery primarily, chances are you may not know the answer to all that’s happening in R&B, because the algorithm is optimized to show you songs that sound very similar to each other, and nothing more. This phenomenon is known as “filter bubbles,” a term coined by Eli Pariser, an online democracy advocate, in 2010, to describe how our online consumption experience is extremely personalized.
This specific programming is designed to keep our attention within the apps, giving streaming companies economic leverage. With rising dependency on algorithms for making music recommendations — because let’s be real, most people don’t have the time to dig up new music — the bubbles are harder to burst. The sneaky part: some people don’t realize it. Those who are aware feel frustrated but don’t always know the path to music they might enjoy.
And don’t get me started on radio, which conditioned our ears before streaming and hasn’t been a space for variety in 30 years. Industry critics point to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which led to “mega-mergers” of radio stations, as the cause. This policy created homogenized corporate-controlled radio playlists that centered mainstream artists and replaced the local beloved DJs who programmed diverse genres that reflected their local cities’ culture and gave rising artists a shot to be heard.
In 2005, for Pop Matters, distinguished author and professor of Black popular culture, Mark Anthony Neal, wrote about the impact the Telecommunications Act of 1996 had on R&B:
“The current radio and label consolidation, along with the emergence of hip-hop as the dominant cross-over genre and the perceived aging of traditional R&B audiences, has created the situation where the best R&B being recorded is simply not heard by the audience that would be attracted to it.”
He continued to write:
“Ultimately, the current state of contemporary R&B has little to do with the mediocrity of R&B’s status quo — there is great music to be heard — but unless mainstream labels create conditions in which emerging R&B artists can be nurtured, without the pressure to cross-over to urban youth audiences, and audiences themselves become more vigilant about seeking out and supporting new music, much of R&B’s current greatness will fall on deaf ears.”
As Neal explained in his article, many R&B singers were expected to follow a hip-hop-friendly formula in 2005 to be played on the radio. Anything else wasn’t deemed good to promote, even if it was good for the culture.
Neal’s 21-year-old words forecast the present. The culture of uniformity over novelty created by the 1996 Act is being exacerbated as we head into a future dominated by streaming, social media, and their algorithms.
2026 R&B artists, especially if they’re signed to a major record label, are inheriting the challenges of the past and facing new ones: R&B is no longer being marketed as a wide umbrella of music that includes uptempo, mid-tempo, and down-tempo sounds with a range of production and emotions, which historically has been a space where Black American people chronicled and communed around their psychosocial experiences since the Blues were invented in the Mississippi Delta.
Because of modern consumption habits, R&B’s humanity and range has been stripped away and reduced to “moodification,” in which human curators and algorithms over-curate the music by a sequence of monotonous-sounding songs into playlists to keep listeners stuck in an airtight sonic bubble without friction: “chill R&B,” or “late night vibes,” or “sad girl music,” or “self-care playlist” or “coffee shop music.”
Because of this consumption climate, R&B artists may adapt their projects to mimic playlist monotony. Since providing too much experimentation on one project could negatively impact an R&B artist’s streams, to survive this and still offer range, they can game the system. How so?
Self-Segmentation.
What is self-segmentation in R&B?
These are purely my observations. But there seems to be an economic incentive to self-segment your music as an R&B artist in the streaming era, or trade in being a whole R&B artist for a career of fragmented, disconnected R&B personas.
By self-segmenting and pre-curating their music before it’s released, R&B artists may adapt to radio and streaming and social media environments, where decentralized music fans are more likely to stay in their bubbles, listening to the same “micro-genres.”
Since these micro fan bases are less willing to hear something different than what the algorithm feeds them, an R&B artist must experiment by serving one micro-genre of R&B or related Black music genres at a time. They must be precise about how they group their songs to prevent friction and skips. Their R&B projects must fit into a predictable algorithmic bucket as much as possible to incentivize streams.
But does self-segmenting work? We could look at Summer Walker’s music to make sense of this.
2018-present: segmenting Summer Walker’s music for survival
Summer Walker made a career out of telling invisible stories of invisible women. Before becoming a platinum-selling artist, she worked as a housekeeper, exotic dancer, battled social anxiety and loneliness, and wrote songs to self-soothe. Much like her inspirations, Erykah Badu, Amy Winehouse, and Lauryn Hill, her uncompromising honesty transformed her into a star.
Summer arrived at the tail end of the Soundcloud era with her mixtape Last Day of Summer (2018), one of the youngest of a non-conformative branch of internet-first and female-led 2010s soul by acts like Jhené Aiko, Rochelle Jordan, Kelela, Tinashe, Kehlani, Ella Mai, Alex Isley, SZA, Ari Lennox, Syd, Abra, Ravyn Lenae, H.E.R., and Cleo Sol. Last Day was a mosaic of lo-fi demos bringing more Southern style to this new school of Black women’s innovation in music. Summer traversed vocal delivery — from unpolished and deeper to higher-pitched and breathier. She adapted her diary-entry style of songwriting to a variety of chill production: guitar-led blues, jazz, soul, and future beats. She was an Atlanta artist who could’ve been from anywhere, given her mysterious mixtape art.
Two anthems from that pre-fame era set Summer on her path: “Session 32,” the acoustic heartbreaker ballad, and “Girls Need Love,” the trappy yearning manifesto. The latter was elevated to a mainstream hit with a Drake feature.
By January 2019, the strategy of segmenting her work had taken full effect. She released CLEAR, a four-track EP of jazzy soul showcasing her raw alto vocals, melisma, and deeper storytelling, backed by a live band, and abstract album art – a scene of a foggy window on a stormy night. There was also an accompanying visual EP.
By October 2019, a parallel Summer Walker universe was created with Over It. The mystique was over. She embodied a modern protagonist who was fully visible, styled in a white durag, doorknockers, in a fuchsia bedroom, disgruntled on a telephone, an apt performance of the album’s title.
To ensure her success in the streaming era, her debut album was a strategic merging of continuous, trap soul production by London on Da Track, with her witty, uncensored, attention-grabbing songwriting that favored autotune and higher-pitched vocals.
London’s sound allowed Summer to fully “cross over to urban youth audiences,” as Neal described in his essay in 2005. She gave a female perspective to a male-dominated soundscape by Bryson Tiller, PartyNextDoor, and 6lack. Over It was a commercial success, selling over 2 million copies to date, and was the highest R&B debut for a female artist on streaming at the time of its release.
The personas on CLEAR and Over It served two distinct audiences on streaming. Algorithms and her different fan bases didn’t have to interact with all sides of her at one time. No trap to interrupt the purists. No soul to interrupt the new school.
But in the aftermath of Over It, Walker revealed to the media that making trendy, streaming-friendly, radio-friendly R&B music wasn’t her passion. She was conflicted about following the script. Many of her comments eerily echoed sentiments made by Neal in his 2005 essay. She’s been a whistleblower of the segmentation of modern R&B.
In a May 2023 interview on Revolt’s “Caresha Please,” Summer expressed that R&B singers are making soulful music (I’m assuming she means songs sung with raw vocals and organic instruments) but lamented that it’s harder for them to get the praise compared to pop singers, and that singing about love is not trendy. She expressed loving her CLEAR project and wanting to do more work like it. “That’s why I am trying to make soulful R&B music, but they don’t put that on the radio these days,” she said. “They like those TikTok songs... I don’t get it.”
She echoed this sentiment again to Complex in September 2025: “I’m just an old-school girl,” she said. “So, I really love just like all the SWVs, and the Xscape, and the Brandy.”
So why would she keep making music that lacks the sonics she desires? If you’re someone like Summer Walker, the self-proclaimed R&B princess, signed to a label, where you have contractual obligations and a best-selling formula, you treat it like a job. You get in the booth, and you do what will make money. But then you create a side project like CLEAR to keep your passions alive.
Finally Over It: A Win for Business, Too Formulaic for the Culture
Two albums later, sticking to the program is still profitable for Summer. Finally Over It, which arrived in November 2025, was the biggest R&B record for a female artist in 2025. Yet the narrative and sound for the project were too formulaic, from the marketing to the music.
With a new image, Summer went from the round-the-way girl to the sophisticated “classed” woman to signal growth and evolution, while remaining true to her Atlanta roots with features from Latto, Mariah the Scientist, 21 Savage, and a cameo from Nene Leakes.Finally Over It’s marketing promised a dual theme: “Split in two parts, it’s a raw look at modern dating: protect your peace or trade love for stability. For Better leans into reflection and self-worth, while For Worse imagines a life where luxury can replace intimacy.” Her team held fans’ hands to clarify the difference in mood between the two albums. To further hype the project, they used imagery of the late Anna Nicole Smith to signal choosing transactional love over emotional connection.
But I found it difficult to understand the thematic difference between For Better and For Worse. What I did take away was that this double album prioritized the segmentation of Summer’s music by genre exploration, more so than by subject matter.
For Better was friendlier to R&B listeners and housed bigger-name features and samples. For Worse is where we hear her experiment with country, pop, melodic rap, and classic soul, presenting more friction for fans. Summer gave listeners what they wanted on disc one and then took them to new places for disc two. On the album, she shines at certain points, but the project is dampened by songs that don’t stay true to the narrative promised.
Summer had a stacked lineup of features from hitmaking artists, but the result of many of these collaborations underwhelmed and felt placed there to engineer viral plays instead of organic chemistry. It also made me wonder if there was a lack of trust that she could hold the album up on her own.
Then, structurally, there were songs cut short abruptly, like Bryson Tiller’s feature on “Give Me A Reason.” Walker expressed on her YouTube channel in November 2025 that she did not have complete power over the length of her songs. She prefers making longer, “older” R&B music with a live band. “I got away with it as much as I could because I’d be fighting with my label about my three, four, five-minute songs,” she said. (Walker is currently signed to Love Renaissance and Interscope Records.) 30 seconds of a song is all that’s necessary for a stream to count on platforms like Spotify.
Finally Over It’s best features included Teddy Swims, Glorilla, Monaleo, Brent Faiyaz, and Doja Cat because I felt their presence enhanced the record. But the songs that stood out most were her solo offerings: “No,” which samples Beyoncé’s “Yes” (2003), in which she continues the convo Bey started 23 years ago. It was also another example of matriarchal sampling in music, something I’ve been tracking on my Substack. Then there was the Grammy-nominated “Heart of a Woman” and “1-800-Heartbreak,” where you can hear her love for ‘90s and ‘00s R&B seep through. I felt her pop and country vocals on “FMT” and “Allegedly” were earnest. But I can’t wrap my head around “Drown In My Love,” which is the most solid vocal performance I’ve heard from her lately, being buried on a deluxe edition instead of on the main album?
Beneath the calculated formulas, I desired more moments that felt free-flowing, whole, and less rigid from Summer. Like on Over It, when “Drunk Dialing” switches up to “LODT,” a song so cinematic, it takes you from leaving the club and calling someone labeled as “Don’t Answer” in your contacts to lonely defeat sliding down your bedroom wall. She closes the song singing her own rendition of Lenny Williams’s “’Cause I Love You.” These moments honor both sides of her modern-meets-classic style. “Baller” on Finally Over It, which feels like a carefree preview of the rap album she’s promising to put out in summer 2026, had a similar moment, where Summer flipped the track to a cover of Roberta Flack’s “The Closer I Get to You.” These intentional distortions make me wonder what she’d create musically if there weren’t corporate rules to follow.
Overall, Finally Over It would pass as an acceptable offering for a mid-tier artist trying to prove herself. Several songs felt true to her style. But I couldn’t help but ask, is Summer negotiating her wholeness as an artist? Is she being held back by the marketing tactic of keeping a Black female R&B artist in a safe lane to appease streaming?
Additionally, the positioning of Finally Over It as the closing chapter of the bullshit felt off, especially with the news surrounding the project of Summer’s involvement with an engaged man who has a history of infidelity. If she hasn’t quite arrived at “healed,” my next critique is not here to judge; nor is this to downplay her reported struggles with social anxiety and the courage it takes to overcome them.
But the perfectly curated marketing of Finally Over It made me think about millennials’ relationship to “healed” as a neat performance. This is evident when former fans proclaim on social media that they’ve given up on Summer Walker’s music when they’ve risen to a more healed place in their life. These statements tie back to consumers treating healing journeys as status and identity markers, which I believe Finally Over It attempted to capitalize on. Healing as a costume is everywhere now — something we wear and brand ourselves with, turning it into an aesthetic, content, and, in this case, a sales tactic. But this doesn’t replace the fact that healing requires non-linear time, reflection, accountability, and space for one’s imperfections.
CLEAR: Can new school Black Women who love old school soul thrive?
While Finally Over It was positioned as the emotional breakthrough project, CLEAR 2: Soft Life (2023) was the exemplary psychosocial exploration of Black womanhood and healing. For instance, on the “Hardlife” intro, Summer is wailing in protest to the person she is setting boundaries with. Throughout the song, she exhibits what I think is “Afrosurreal.” In the “...Manifesto,” author D Scot. Miller wrote that “Afro-Surreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it.” Walker does so by confronting the absurdity of achieving a “soft life” in a society that demands a performance of ease and calm from Black women while offering them harshness and hostility.
“Me and my, Me and my
Me and my Women who look like me
Me and my friends, My momma, my sister
Elders and aunties All of my kin
Me and my, Me and my
Me and my, Me and all my black queens
Me and my, Me and my
Me and my, When will we get what we need?”
— “Hardlife” by Summer Walker
On the outro of the track, when she chants for her friends, her momma, her elders, and her kin, and asks, “When will we get what we need?” she is uncovering an invisible world where many Black women live without reciprocity and don’t feel the power to speak up about it. Is that realness why CLEAR 2 was too much for the mainstream (visible world)? Because it possesses the rawness that Walker says isn’t played on the radio, CLEAR 2 did not get the widespread credit it deserved for its depth.
Walker feels most at home undoubtedly in this stripped-back, lyrically introspective lane, but that’s a slower, less marketable approach for a modern Black female artist. Whereas “neo-soul” as a concept had visibility in R&B 25 years ago, producing powerhouses like Jill Scott and Erykah Badu, it has succumbed to the “invisible world” of underground indie Black music and is a side quest for Summer, existing in the shadows of her Over It persona.
For further proof, look at new guard Black female singers like Ari Lennox, who collaborated with Summer on “Unloyal” and “Queen Space,” and who carry on the jazz, funk, soul, gospel fusion of Motown and ‘70s R&B full-time. She’s devoted mostly to classic production that can’t be lumped in with her experimental lo-fi or uptempo peers on a streaming playlist. Ari’s power vocal acrobatics are in the same school as Jazmine Sullivan, avoiding the restraint that’s popular in today’s R&B. And her songwriting captures modern living with comedic relief. Ari has two certified platinum singles “Shea Butter Baby” featuring J. Cole and “BMO,” produced by Omen is hip-hop soul versus organic instrumentation. Both singles remind me again of Neal’s theory that R&B artists need hip-hop adjacency to acquire hits. Considering the streaming landscape, Lennox is uncategorizable, an admirable trait to music lovers looking for something unique. But that means the auto-generated playlists are less likely to boost her latest album, Vacancy, in popular lo-fi R&B and hip-hop adjacent playlists creating an unfair disadvantage. Since Lennox’s debut album in 2019, she’s felt unsupported by her former label, Dreamville and her brand hasn’t seen the market success that Summer has achieved with her Over It series.
Then there are newcomers like Coco Jones, who came through the actress-turned-musician pipeline, while facing colorism in the entertainment industry behind the scenes. Coco has been exploring the duality of classic soul and modern radio-friendly hits, with her debut Grammy-nominated 2025 album, Why Not More? But it’s too early to tell how the pressures of the industry will impact her approach to R&B.
Cleo Sol, hailing from the UK, is also heavily influenced by classic soul without compromise and has similar inspirations to Ari Lennox. After negative experiences at a major label early in her career, she has been independent for several years, delivering music that covers a wide range: reflections on motherhood, romantic ups and downs, difficult family dynamics, and spirituality. Sonically, she and her husband/producer Inflo, favor warm, analog, and vintage sounds by recording over organic instrumentation and with choirs on projects like Mother and with her fellow SAULT collective. (And since we’re speaking on segmenting personas, Cleo’s anonymous side project with SAULT, an experimental music project, seems to be a way to explore her sound outside of the more visible Cleo brand without isolating her core fan base). Her songwriting style is filled with affirmations and candid inner dialogue. She’s a leading voice in independent music, winning Best Independent Album at the British AIM Independent Music Awards in 2022 and Barack Obama listed her as part of his favorite music in 2024. When it comes to streaming and internet tropes, she’s lumped into “self-care R&B” and “clean girl” aesthetic bubbles because she uses a restrained vocal technique that sounds softer, while her image is minimalistic, incorporating white and earthy hues in her album and single art.
I’ve observed a sector of online fans who use Sol’s music to signal their peace and enlightenment era and pit her against singers like Summer, who are labeled as “toxic.” Participating in binary thinking is senseless, since Cleo explores deep-seated pain in songs like “23,” (2021) a record about matriarchal emotional trauma, and “I Love You,” (2020) a vulnerable ache about abandonment, alongside transformative lullabies like “Know That You’re Loved” (2021). Because Sol delivers it with Christian ideology and without profanity and a “messy” public character, it’s deemed “respectable” and “safe.” But this perception flattens the mountain of complex emotions she displays in her music to a calm background sound for a “soft life” TikTok.
Ultimately, when Summer’s name is in gossip pages and reacting to drama on social media, consumers feel validated in their “basic” perceptions of her. They write off her music completely, meanwhile disregarding that Summer’s catalog shows plenty range: songs (like “CPR” and “Body”) that possess a sensual presentation, or her deep cuts (“Grave,” “Karma” and “Insane”), which she delivers with lyrics that feel uniquely mystical, old-folk and Southern in their storytelling.
In the case of Cleo, when her husband and producer, Inflo, is facing scathing allegations about owing millions of dollars to a former friend, collaborator, and rapper, Little Simz, in court and in diss tracks (Inflo countersued) — their low profile and track record of creating healing and radical music protects their brand from being labeled “messy” too publicly.
Instead of pitting these women against one another on how healed or unhealed they are, I’m curious about why they have achieved consistent output, notable press, sold-out shows, and a cult following, yet face challenges in getting widespread support when it comes to mainstream airplay and streaming for their raw soul music, which gets pushed into “alternative” and “adult R&B” buckets, compared to 90s/00s and trap-influenced R&B sounds. To understand the disparity: Summer’s Over It (2019) has 3 billion streams on Spotify, her Clear 2: Soft Life EP (2023) has 180 million streams, Lennox’s Shea Butter Baby (2019) has more than 400 million streams, and Sol’s Rose in the Dark (2020) has more than 300 million.
Black women in R&B who prioritize the old school (‘70s and before) sound and who emerged in the last 15 years are fighting to make this music — remember it costs more to record and perform raw soul music since you must pay musicians — and I know it might not seem like it to those who are true fans, and if that’s you, I will gently hold your hand and say: you might just live in a filter bubble. On a macro-level these soul savants have to build and preserve sanctuaries within an industry that once pushed Erykah or Jill but doesn’t see new artists like them as a priority. People who claim they want this music must acknowledge that the system gives these singers few choices:
Choose to house the sound at a mainstream label that doesn’t prioritize finding the best way to support you, like Ari? Choose long-term creative independence, with fewer economic resources like Cleo? Or sideline the raw soul with EPs like CLEAR to prioritize the formula (Over It) for greater mainstream sales, like Walker?
Is self-segmenting worth it?
In observing the seven years of segmenting Walker’s music, her formula for success is good business, but there are cultural implications. She faces hate from those who see her as a “chicken alfredo music,” which is a sloppy misogynistic critique, but points back to a “toxic,” “sad girl” stereotype in R&B. I’ve seen this up close: admittedly, there were two men — even though she has plenty of male fans, both loud and closeted — who came to me during my Summer Walker tribute night and made these assumptions about her music.
The “angry, trauma-filled” Black women in R&B trope isn’t new. It was projected onto Mary J. Blige (I remember growing up hearing adults say they prefer sad Mary because the music was better), and even Melanie Fiona in the past. Those labels overshadow the range of soul and subject matter that Black women actually deliver.
Another implication of Summer segmenting her music is that she now has micro fanbases who don’t hold space for her as a whole artist. She’s still mostly associated with the trap soul sound — once a gritty underground novelty that has reached over-saturation. As a result, you find Last Day and CLEAR defenders online pushing back against Over It devotees and vice versa. Walker is aware and joked about this. Upon the release of CLEAR 2 in 2023, she addressed her fans as if they were a divided nation:
“For my new listeners, I wanna let it be known that CLEAR Projects are my favorite type of music to make, it’s slick the only time I actually have fun making music,” she wrote on Instagram. “it’s raw it’s real it’s live. is for my day 1 fans, the rest of y’all will get y’all auto tune packed radio joints when the album comes out.”
This quip and many others about mainstream R&B music are her way of saying the Over It persona is a uniform. Her most profitable albums aren’t what satisfy her, but she clocks into her job to fulfill what she signed up for. Summer Walker is essentially an artist in a deal in which she’s required to put profits before her soul.
The Mid 2020s: A New Wave of Segmentation — Destin Conrad, Leon Thomas, and Bryson Tiller
I’m starting to observe the impact self-segmentation is having on other R&B fan bases. A former popular Vine creator turned promising progressive R&B act — Destin Conrad — is one to highlight in this conversation. Last year, he released the Grammy-nominated Love On Digital, an R&B-pop album, featuring modern fusions mixed with Jersey club to Neptunes-nostalgic production. And by the end of the year, he hit us with the alternative jazz wHIMSY through his alter ego, Mr. E.
Conrad, who was in a jazz choir in high school, told the Los Angeles Times’ Kailyn Brown that jazz taught him about the origins of soul music and its ties to gospel and modern R&B. Making wHIMSY in collaboration with jazz musicians was a spontaneous choice. “I’m really glad I did it because I feel like my fans really like that album and I really like that album as well,” he said in the interview. “I think it’s some of my best work, actually.”
Though he says most of his fans have embraced Mr. E, the separation of his music (R&B and Jazz) appears to have formed two micro fan bases online. This evidence is small but noticeable to me: there’s a snippet of Destin Conrad’s January Tiny Desk, posted to a record label’s TikTok page. In this clip, he’s performing a jazz rendition of his most popular song, “In The Air.” Keep in mind, the original production is in the family of Aaliyah’s “One in a Million.” In the comment section, a fan expressed not liking the live jazzy version (they wanted his performance to sound exactly like the record). Other fans defended Conrad, saying, “y’all didn’t listen to whimsy, and that’s okay…i guess.” Another wrote, “Oh, we got mr. e…wHIMSY fans getting fed,” acknowledging that they’ve embraced living in Conrad’s fragmented world.
Similarly, Leon Thomas III is flexing his range slowly but surely. The singer has a long history in entertainment, from Broadway to Hollywood, to songwriting for major producers and artists. Upon release of his Pholks EP in 2025, I noticed a fan on Threads commented they were disappointed that it wasn’t a continuation of the slow, darker psychedelic R&B, on his Grammy-winning Mutt (2024), which incorporated both computerized and organic instruments. On the other hand, it was perceived favorably by fans, who considered it authentic. They pushed back against keeping Thomas in a box.
According to NPR, Pholks was the brainchild of Thomas and his Mutt collaborators David Phelps and Robert Gueringer, with each record paying respects to Black artists in funk, R&B to rock and roll who inspired him, from Prince (“Just the Way You Are”) to Quincy Jones (“My Muse”) and Jimi Hendrix whose influence has a ubiquitous presence in his music. “As we continue to grow, it’s very important for urban artists to pay homage to the people that came before us,” he told Hungermag last fall.
Pholks was also about collaboration and the freedom to explore more organic instrumentation in his music, Thomas explained to Spotify’s Radar series. “It can be a hard road, but I’m gonna fight…If people like myself don’t do that now, I have no idea what’s going to happen in the next 10 years,” he said. During the chat, he mentioned the pressure to release music that’s authentic to him in the fast-paced music industry. “I was just trying to make sure I didn’t get dropped,” he said. “...This industry is unforgiving...Everybody’s very focused on making sure that you have your ROI — return on investment.”
As Conrad did with wHIMSY, Pholks served as a strategy or side project for Thomas to train his audience for further expansion. Generally speaking, Walker, Thomas, and Conrad’s cases reveal that surprising their fans with improvisation and expansion, and live and organic instrumentation, was perceived as sonic betrayal to some fans. If these artists had jumped to completely different macro-genres (this sounds so ridiculous to say), I’d understand the dramatic reactions.
Maybe it’s me? But Walker moving between trap soul and stripped back soul doesn’t feel like an overwhelming difference to my ear, energetically. Conrad moving one micro-genre over from a lo-fi soul song to smooth jazz isn’t a big leap, and neither is speeding up BPMs within the funk genre in Thomas’s case. It proves that the too precise segmentation of R&B is infantilizing listeners’ ears so much so that a slight change is too jarring for some to appreciate, and that some fans only appreciate R&B music made with digital production.
I’m gonna tangent a bit because the Leon Thomas fan moment I stated earlier also reveals a cultural amnesia. We’ve forgotten that a song like Thomas’s “Just the Way You Are” is what upbeat R&B music sounds like, and it’s absurd that he has to explain why he’s making it as a Black artist. But had it come from a non-Black artist, some people would suddenly get it. Summer Walker even has a few upbeat tracks, “Dat Right There,” a 00s Neptunes-style production, and “Ex For a Reason,” an ATL bass-inspired one. But her fans prefer her on slow records, leaving her energetic side of her catalogue underdeveloped. Even when songs are uptempo in modern R&B, they feel minimalist and not maximalist. This speaks to 2026 perceptions that R&B is slow or atmospheric and extremely personal. Social-friendly dance R&B has been evicted from the genre.
40 years ago, someone like Kaytranada, who has produced danceable beats for a huge list of Black R&B singers who usually sing on lo-fi, would be typical club R&B. He’d produce for artists like Janet Jackson or Colonel Abrams, who were making hit upbeat R&B records in the 1980s. But Kaytranada’s mid-to-up-tempo music is categorized into genre-bending alternative, electronic, and house because it’s faster and more energetic than typical 2026 R&B. By placing him outside the R&B umbrella, it speaks to the missing “middle of R&B” and “R&B bop” (the communal groove, energy, and beats per minute, between the slow jam and the deeper house record) that was once prominent. The majority of his dance records sound more like post-disco, funk, and boogie, which were played on R&B radio and clubs in the 80s, than the categories the industry places him in now.
Bryson Tiller: Testing Cohesiveness vs. Segmentation
Before ending this section, I want to bring up Bryson Tiller, a consistent collaborator of Summer, who is credited for inventing T R A P S O U L (2015), where trap and R&B blurred, and boasted diamond-selling singles like “Don’t” and “Exchange.” With his last two albums (2024 and 2025), he enlisted two strategies to get away from the T R A P S O U L bubble: cohesion (Bryson Tiller) versus segmenting (Solace & The Vices).
With the release of Bryson Tiller, I noticed his exploration of genre was at an all-time high. Tiller told Billboard that he collaborated with different writers and producers for the first time to “break the creative restraints” people put on him. Exploring pop, drill, Jersey club, dancehall, neo soul, and the hard-hitting 808s on trap soul, paralleled the diversity of sounds I enjoyed in Aaliyah’s self-titled album. Many R&B artists stay within one or two styles on a project, but her eponymously-named record took us through several, making it a north star for experimental R&B in popular music in the 2000s. Tiller explained to Billboard in 2024 his experimental album’s origins:
“...People put me in a box for so long. They want me to stick to this one thing I did in 2015, which was T R A P S O U L. Rapping, singing and blending it to make it one thing. Keep doing this and everything will win. Even people around me that I’m cool with, “Yeah bro, just stick to what you know.” I’m like, “No, I’m an artist. I feel like I’m capable of so many different things.” People don’t know that I’m a better rapper than when I made T R A P S O U L. I don’t wanna say I’m a better singer, but I dumbed down my vocals for T R A P S O U L. People just don’t know what I’m capable of as a singer.”
In a follow-up interview in 2025, Bryson felt freer after releasing his self-titled. “It worked, it felt so good. I was like, “OK, now everybody will leave me alone! They’ll clearly see I’m doing whatever the hell I want. This is Bryson Tiller now, and all the things Bryson Tiller is capable of.” For his follow-up project, Solace & The Vices, released last year, Tiller traded in the cohesive format for segmentation, in the form of a double album, which explores R&B on one side and rap on the other. He said this process of separating his worlds felt organic to him.
Seeing Walker, Thomas, Conrad’s, and Tiller’s approaches, it seems in the mid 2020s R&B artists are surviving challenges — limited openness to what R&B is supposed to sound like, meeting sales and streams demands in a climate that upholds uniformity over novelty, and limited attention spans by listeners to give friction it a chance — by segmenting their tastes precisely into double albums or separate projects. Whether they are doing so intentionally or not, this process makes it easier for fans to stay on a listening journey without “disturbing them.”
To sum it up, Walker wants to be a soul singer with her guitar, Conrad wants to be a jazz crooner, Thomas wants to be a rockstar, and Tiller wants to rap as much as he sings — but “they” won’t let them do it without a fight.
Reclaiming and learning from the past
Back in the day, buying an album meant you had to submit your ears to the chief curators — the artists’ and producers’ tastes. Because you had to listen to vinyl or CD, there was no precise data to tell which tracks or micro-genres were skipped. As a listener, you may not have loved a particular record, but you understood it’s part of the artistic process. Now it seems fans are moving beyond not liking — they can’t bear the existence of diversity in sound. And they don’t have to because they’re not subject to listening to a whole album anymore.
The truth is, mainstream Black artists have always been experimental on albums. When I listen to the 80s music released before the Telecommunications Act of 1996, I sense Black artists were freer to explore (not to say they didn’t face limitations). More organic exploration of house, funk, club, pop, soul, reggae, and country. When I think of Prince, Patrice Rushen, Grace Jones, and Luther Vandross, I think of a range of genres. When I listen to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, I never count the genres and think about each track as a mood; I hear Michael making music that sounds good and brings people together.
Post 1996 Telecom Act, Black artists continued gaming the system. Mariah would fulfill her Hot 100 demands, then bring deeper experimentation on a remix album. Beyoncé with I Am... Sasha Fierce (2008), and in 2022, and in a very precise way, with full creative control on Renaissance and Cowboy Carter (2024). Jill Scott’s To Whom It May Concern is a sonic exploration of jazz, hip-hop, blues, and house, and she earned legacy status to be free. R&B artists went the features route with notable producers — working with Robert Glasper on Black Radio compilations for jazz exploration or Honey Dijon and Disclosure to crossover into dance. The Foreign Exchange piloted the early days of internet-first indie hip hop and R&B to stay true to their vision.
How will the future of R&B discovery change?
All is not lost in R&B album-making. Several Black female acts in R&B have found an uncompromising lane in the past 5 years, despite moodification: The Grammy-Award winning projects Jazmine Sullivan’s Heaux Tales (2021), SZA’s S.O.S. (2022), Victoria Monét’s Jaguar II (2023). Also, honorable mention to Rochelle Jordan’s Through the Wall (2025), one of the highest-rated albums on Metacritic this past year.
However, they choose to express their R&B, there is still a “Black weirdo tax” set on Black R&B artists for diverging from the usual, in a way I don’t see placed on modern experimental hip-hop acts who are their age-mates. Tyler dropped a dance album, Kendrick went full LA on us, A$AP Rocky picked out all the sonics he wanted, and some listeners even met Jack Harlow’s neo-soul project with curiosity and seriousness.
The ironic part about this current landscape is that R&B artists have more space than ever to tell their story as digital formats allow for infinite expression. Yet, they’re held to stricter rules because audiences are more conservative in hearing only the exact sonic production they want in R&B. Whether it’s radio, algorithms, or other biases to blame, it’s dehumanizing and waters down their talent.
The segmentation of R&B music trains listeners to tolerate parts of an artist and not the whole artist. It trains us to consume fragments of the genre instead of its expansiveness. As one of the biggest R&B singers in this environment, I often wonder if Summer is producing the music that’s most intuitive to her. Now that she’s played the game for three albums, is Summer finally over the segmentation of her work?
Even in my work as a DJ and creative director, I admittedly participated in mood-based segmenting of these artists. For my Music Nerds social club, I held my Summer Walker tribute at a wine bar because she has a wider reach, and Cleo Sol’s tribute at a wellness club, because I expected her fans to support her in an enclosed, relaxed setting. However, for my modern/alt-R&B DJ residency Serene Sessions, I’m actively popping the R&B filter bubbles — I play both Cleo Sol and Summer Walker in my DJ set. I intend to explore all the sounds representative of R&B, from traditional to experimental — a democratic space for all modern R&B listening.
Maybe the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and corporate-owned methods of discovery changed R&B promotion forever. But outside the margins, independent journalists and curators such as YAMS, Soul Sugar, Colors, and Rated R&B are uplifting the whole artist and the whole genre, and not just fragments or what’s trendy, or pitting subgenres of soul against each other. It’s our responsibility to ask if what we’re seeing is all that is really there, especially knowing the history of the commodification of Black music.
My last thoughts: Black artists should not feel apologetic or shy about exploring Black music. These genres are Black music, and it’s their birthright to explore them. There are audiences with an appetite for range within a body of work and within R&B as a whole. To build on what Neal said in his 2005 essay, it’s going to take supporting independent artists, sitting with mainstream artists’ catalogs, not just what the radio or streaming playlists are selling you, and supporting independent curators and journalists, especially Black ones, to find more of the R&B we want. Or we may never hear the R&B we need.
Originally published in Scene Serene. Reprinted with permission from the author.
