Choice of music is based on the experience you want. R&B music makes me feel like I’m in an altered reality.
Before I embark on any journey I take--whether it’s going to school, work, stores, or simply driving home--I have to play the right music. Even when I’m about to get in the shower, I must find the perfect songs to listen to. There are many genres of music: rap, country, hip hop, rock & roll. I prefer music that's soothing and calming to the mind.
I'm talking about the notorious music of R&B. R&B music first started in the 1920s from Jazz and Blues. It wasn’t very popular until the 1940s. It was a way for African American cultures to be expressed through music. This type of music became a sense of identity in the southern states like New Orleans and Mississippi. A special man by the name of Louis Jordan helped start the uprising of R&B. Louis Jordan was part of a band called the Tympany Five (“The Evolution and History of R&B”). Louis was one of the first to add different elements to music like electric guitars, new types of clothes, and dancing (“The Evolution and History of R&B”).
R&B music has a mixture of different instruments. Some of these instruments include the piano, electric guitar, and saxophone. Over the years, the style of R&B music has slowly shifted. According to “The Evolution and History of R&B,” in the '40s R&B was related to jazz and blues. In the '50s the music was considered funky and made people want to dance. It was closely related to rock and roll. People around the world soon started to believe R&B was speaking unfaithful words, which caused the music to shift towards gospel, which became known as soul music. In the '70s R&B went the direction of disco music. Everything soon started to blend together in the '80s as R&B became a mix of jazz, hip hop, and funky music. Probably the most known era of R&B was the '90s with groups like TLC, Boys 2 Men, XScape, etc. This era took on more of the hip hop side of R&B but in a soft spoken and loving way to express how they felt. Today in the 21st century, R&B has many influential people like Usher, Mariah Carey, and others. This generation of R&B is a little bit more upbeat and the use of autotune has become used more and more (“The Evolution and History of R&B”).
R&B brings a calming sensation like no other. It eases your mind to the point you forget about your worries, troubles, and anxieties. You start to feel passion for yourself, other people, and appreciate life around you. The people who choose to incorporate R&B into their lives, they’re not the aggressive type. They’re laid back and relaxed most of the time, like a middle aged 40 year old woman sitting at home, drinking wine listening to the affectionate sound of R&B music playing. R&B lovers tend to be the ones to enjoy the little things in life. Whether it’s cleaning up the house on the weekend, outside enjoying the fresh air, exercising, cooking, or simply taking a nice warm shower. They take in the moments and enjoy themselves.
R&B brings a calming sensation like no other. It eases your mind to the point you forget about your worries, troubles, and anxieties. You start to feel passion for yourself, other people, and appreciate life around you.
As someone who has listened to many different kinds of music, R&B is the only one that’s exactly right for me. Rappers' aggressiveness in their tone, and the fast pace of the songs get me too energized and hyped up like I’m about to go into war for no reason. It gets to the point I don’t know what’s being said anymore. Country songs, with their western voices, bore me with the lack of rhythm and expression in their voices. The classical sound of instrumental music is like the music teachers play in their classrooms. It’s calming to the point you want to fall asleep.
I used to be a mixture of Hip Hop and Rap songs. Anything I listened to would be rap, no matter what I was doing. Whether I was riding around in the car, doing homework, taking a shower, working out, I always had Rap music playing in my ear. I started to feel lost though; I wasn’t enjoying the music anymore. It was like a pain to my ears. I tried over and over with many different songs, but I couldn’t get into it anymore. I felt like my body was physically rejecting the music. It wasn't meant for me.
All of a sudden one day a 90’s R&B song plays in my headphones. It sounded absolutely wonderful. I played it back until I got tired of it. It relaxed me to the point where I felt like no one else was around me. It was only me and the music. Everything at the moment was perfect. A feeling that I didn’t want to leave behind.
It’s crazy to realize the amount of years I’ve missed out on. Instead of feeling the calmness of the world, I felt the adrenaline of going into battle. I failed to encounter the marvelous genre of R&B until it randomly found me. Everyone at some point in their lives wants to feel like everything around them doesn’t exist. Like we are in our own world. From now on I always choose my R&B music so I can stay in my own world and feel the lyrics of the songs flow through my body.
Works Cited
“The Evolution and History of R&B.” Sound of Life, 10 July 2022, https://www.soundoflife.com/blogs/mixtape/evolution-history-of-rnb-music, Accessed 24 January 2025.
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