R&B

In July this year Steve Lacy scored a Top 40 hit with "Bad Habit". What was perhaps quite surprising about this is it was the first R&B record to make the Top 40 this year. Since then there's been just one further R&B Top 40 hit in "Under the Influence" by Chris Brown.

How did R&B became virtually extinct in the Top 40?

It's existed in some form in the charts since the 50s. Genres like soul and funk would fall under the R&B banner but by the 90s anything under the banner was being described as R&B. 

It became more closely aligned with rap music. Collaborations were happening between rappers and R&B singers and some of these records made could legitimately be described as both rap and R&B. Such was the similarity, the way some records would fall under the rap or R&B banner was dictated by whether the record was rapped or sung.

At the same time though, the term R&B started being used to describe pop music to give it a bit more credibility. Even the Spice Girls single "Holler" in the year 2000 was being described as R&B. 

The Spice Girls example though showed how the lines were being blurred between R&B and pop. It was written by Rodney Jerkins, Fred Jerkins and LaShawn Daniels, who have written many R&B records too. You had other producers such as The Neptunes and Timbaland who were making both pop and R&B records. these producers had a certain sound that could be heard across all these records.

As we got further into the 21st century, the more commercial rappers and R&B singers started making electropop music and EDM. 

Coming out the other side of this, rap music has gone from strength to strength from a chart perspective but R&B hasn't quite recovered. Many of the R&B hits from the last few years have come from Justin Bieber which doesn't do much for it's credibility. 

Who knows though, this time next year the charts could be full of R&B