Born David Andrew Burd on March 15, 1988, Lil Dicky (also known as LD) is an American rapper and comedian. With the release of the music video for his song “Ex-Boyfriend,” which received over a million views in a single day on YouTube, he rose to fame. On July 31, 2015, he released his debut …
The old-school, funk-and soul-infused hip-hop legacy of genre pioneers A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and the Pharcyde has been carried on by Detroit’s Slum Village. The group, originally made up of rappers Baatin and T3 and producer/rapper J Dilla, made their debut as Ssenepod in the early 1990s. When their first album, Fan-Tas-Tic, …
Throughout the late ’90s and early 2000s, one of the most surprising mainstream infiltrations was Cam’ron’s increasingly bizarre yet distinctively East Coast gangster rap. The rapper gained support from the Notorious B.I.G. and worked with Big L and the late Mase. His debut album, Confessions of Fire (1998), went on to become a Top Ten …
From their 1993 debut through their conceptual albums in the 2010s, one of the most prolific rap groups was also one of the most progressive bands in modern music: the Roots. Even though they were a rap group with many instrumentalists (they included a sousaphonist in their roster starting in 2007), which may seem like …
Beside frequent songwriting and production partners Christopher “Tricky” Stewart and Carlos “Los Da Mystro” McKinney, Terius “The-Dream” Nash advanced electronic pop-R&B during the 2000s and 2010s, continuing a path cut by the likes of Leon Sylvers III, Kashif, Prince, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Teddy Riley, Timbaland and Missy Elliott, and the Neptunes.
Beyoncé is an incredible dancer, producer, songwriter, singer, and multi-talented global superstar. The Houstonian became well-known as the lead singer for pop-R&B group Destiny’s Child in the late 1990s. In the decade that followed, she began her current run of number one solo studio albums with Dangerously in Love (2003), the album that gave rise …
Celebrated mainly for her longing love songs and hooks, but just as capable of using her silky, sweet, meringue-like voice to deliver agonized cinematic ballads, Ashanti became an almost omnipresent pop-R&B force in 2002. The week of March 30 that year, the singer and songwriter followed the Beatles as only the second artist to simultaneously …
Along with fellow founders D’Angelo and Erykah Badu, Maxwell was enormously important in defining and shaping the neo-soul movement that rose to prominence in the latter half of the 1990s. Drawing his greatest inspiration from the concept of the R&B auteur (looking to artists like Prince, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, etc.), Maxwell recorded some of …
Since he first became popular in the early 2000s, T-Pain has demonstrated his singing abilities, and his use of Auto-Tune had a worldwide ripple effect that defined particular genres of music for a whole generation. After releasing his eponymously named debut album, Rappa Ternt Sanga (2005), the Floridian quickly raced to the top of the …
Miguel has undergone an intriguing career trajectory as a progressive R&B artist who specializes in carnal, swaggering melodies. The Los Angeles native had been flirting with stardom for several years when he broke through as a songwriter with Jaheim’s “Finding My Way Back,” a Grammy-nominated R&B hit that paved the way for a string of …
