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Nu soul (AKA "neo soul") is a musical genre that fuses R&B, 1970s style soul, and hip hop. It is usually said to have begun in the late 1980s with New Jack Swing artists like Guy and, later, early Boyz II Men. The originator of proper "hip-hop soul" is Mary J. Blige, whose 1992 debut, What's The 411?, has proven enormously influential to the later genre of nu soul. In the mid-to-late-1990s, artists like D'Angelo (Brown Sugar, 1995), Lauryn Hill (The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, 1998) and Erykah Badu (Baduizm, 1997) made the genre a critical success, with moderate to occasionally-blockbuster commercial success. Soon after the turn of the millennium, artists like Alicia Keys (Songs in A Minor, 2001) further popularized the sound, to some critical disdain, breaking it into the mainstream top 40.
To date, Hill remains the most well-known and consistently successful nu soul artist from a mainstream, commercial point of view, thanks to two big pop singles: "Everything Is Everything" and "Doo Wop", both of which were far more hip-hop oriented, containing rapped verses, than most neo soul; Hill is also widely known because of her successful sweep of the 1999 Grammys. Keys, however, is widely known because she has had the biggest single mainstream nu soul hit to date with "Fallin'", which contained no rap and consequently managed to cross over not only onto the pop charts, but also onto both the hot and the soft AC charts.
Towards the turn of the millennium, Macy Gray had a massive urban, pop, and AC hit with "I Try", making her pretty well-known by mainstream America, but she was never able to repeat her success. In early 2002, Tweet scored a big urban and pop hit with "Oops", which was too avant-garde, up-tempo, and raunchy to catch on with AC radio. Like City High, Tweet is generally known by the MTV crowd, but she's not anywhere near being a household name in mainstream America.
City High managed two successful singles on the pop charts, "Caramel" and "What Would You Do", in 2001, which was a time when hearing hip-hop on pop radio was no longer anything exeptional, as it had been during Hill's initial success. Because of this, City High did not receive the same widespread recognition that Hill had three years earlier; and since City High's singles were more upbeat and rhythmic sounding than Keys' "Fallen" and Gray's "I Try", they did not cross over onto the AC charts. As a result, City High, like Tweet, is nowhere near as well known as either Hill, Gray, or Keys, even despite the group's pop radio and MTV hits.
Even less well-known are Res, Truth Hurts, and India Arie, all of whom have each had just one very minor pop hit ("They Say Vision" (2002), "Addictive" (2002), and "Video" (2001), respectively).
The other nu soul artists are some of the least known of all, having yet to cross over to the mainstream despite the fact that most have found success with the urban audience, urban radio, and BET. Most have also found success in America on the music video channels MTV2 and VH1 Soul. Some, like Maxwell, Erykah Badu, and D'Angelo are somewhat known by mainstream America for having initiated the neo soul genre, from critical acclaim, from word-of-mouth recommendations of their albums, and from other media appearances, e.g., D'Angelo's performance on VH1's Men Strike Back 2000 and Badu's role in the movie The Cider House Rules. Only time will tell whether any of the other neo soul artists begin to crossover into the mainstream and become household names or whether the genre remains predominantly as a sub-genre of music played mainly just on urban radio stations and BET.
List of nu soul artists |
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