Neo Soul is a music genre which is a Soul/Contemporary R&B mix, with more jazz/funk influences. The term was coined by record executive Kedar Massenburg sometime late in The '90s to describe the breakthrough artists in this period, namely Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, D'Angelo, and Maxwell. The label Neo Soul itself isn't exactly embraced by many of these artists, mainly due to the "neo" part, as if Soul died at some point.
The music itself, while taking a page out of R&B's mass appeal with the structure and sound, is still deeply rooted in Soul music. It is still subject to Pop-Culture Isolation, as it's almost exclusively played on urban/African-American radio and outlets and hasn't reached the same heights it did back in the late 1990s, though artists like Tyler the Creator, Frank Ocean, Kali Uchis, and Anderson .Paak have achieved substantial success playing the genre from the late 2010s onward.
Artists generally under the Neo Soul label:
- Adele (gradually moved towards more straightforward pop)
- Marsha Ambrosius
- Roy Ayers (considered an Ur-Example)
- Erykah Badu
- 2000 - Mama's Gun
- Bilal
- Aloe Blacc
- Tevin Campbell
- Cody Chesnutt
- 2002 - The Headphone Masterpiece
- D'Angelo
- 1995 - Brown Sugar
- 2000 - Voodoo
- 2014 - Black Messiah
- Cee Lo Green (solo career)
- Anthony Hamilton
- Heather Headley
- HER
- Lauryn Hill
- Christion
- Chrisette Michele
- India.Arie
- J Dilla
- 2001 - Welcome 2 Detroit
- Kem
- Alicia Keys
- Lenny Kravitz
- John Legend
- Omar Lye-Fook (Considered to be one of the earliest progenitors of the genre)
- Maxwell
- Meshell Ndegeocello
- Janelle Monáe (somewhere between this and the Minneapolis Sound)
- Frank Ocean (Channel Orange; Blonde also has a lot of this, but is generally way too fucking weird to fit)
- OutKast (also hip-hop, but leaned extremely heavily towards neo soul circa Aquemini and has always had elements of the genre)
- Genesis Owusu (Genre-Busting example, but this fits well enough)
- Anderson .Paak
- Q-Tip (Kamaal/The Abstract)
- Corinne Bailey Rae
- The Roots (their late '90s-early '00s records (particularly Things Fall Apart) would see them experimenting more with jazz and soul music, making them apart of the genre)
- Raphael Saadiq
- Res
- 2001 - How I Do
- Emeli Sande
- Jill Scott
- Seal
- Guy Sebastian
- serpentwithfeet
- 2018 - soil
- Musiq Soulchild
- Angie Stone
- Joss Stone
- Jazmine Sullivan
- Moses Sumney (this combined with Classical Music, Jazz and Alternative R&B)
- THEE Satisfaction
- Justin Timberlake
- 2013 - "Mirrors"
- Tony! Toni! Toné! (House of Music, their earlier material is new jack swing, though neo soul started creeping in around Sons of Soul. Also see Raphael Saadiq.)
- Tyler, the Creator (Flower Boy onward)
- 2019 - Igor
- Kali Uchis (a bit of a Genre-Busting example, but this is probably a good label)
- Jack Vidgen
- Amy Winehouse
- 2003 - Frank
- 2006 - Back to Black
