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Not surprised as far as it concerns black men. The last two decades have seen zero interest in creating black male singers with mainstream appeal. The industry constantly looks for white male, white females and black females who fit that bill as hopeful mainstream singers. Black dudes? Not so much. Overall black male R&B singers are nowhere near as prominent as they were in the late 60s, 70s and 80s. And black male R&B singers with crossover appeal? That has been a dying breed.
Black guys are now pigeon-holed into the rap genre. For very new black male singer (of ANY genre) that gets a record deal there appears to be 20 black guys entering the industry as rap artists. And those rap artists typically use profane language, end up writing about the same old thing (getting rich, getting hoes), get into various degrees of trouble with the law, sabotage their appeal with inexcusable bouts of narcissism (hello, Kanye) or all of the above. That leads to less sales, less money and thus less recognition. Meanwhile white guys (or Bruno Mars) come in and fill the void for mainstream hip-hop and R&B music often with black men producing and writing their material. And black male consumers are okay with this which also means they are a major part of the problem. These same black men also are satisfied that the ladies like Beyonce and Rhianna are the biggest black selling artists on the scene and they treat these women like icons. Straight white men, as a collective group, NEVER settle for playing second fiddle to their own women in any genre. Period. End of story.
What does surprise me though is that no black female artists topped the Billboard chart for 2013. There are no shortage of black women singers being ushered onto the scene and many of them have found crossover success. But perhaps what is happening is that more and more white women are following the paths of white men by incorporating elements of soul, R&B and hip-hop music into their work. And when you get white girls like Adele or Lorde or whomever doing this there is no need for all those white female consumers to buy the black female product unless those females are Beyonce and Rhianna.
White people taking on black styles and profitting from it is nothing new. The way for black genres to stay strong however is by having a continuous flow of fresh, strong black talent constantingly producing great material and staying ahead of the game. And the work they produced, as was the case in the past, would find its way to pop radio stations and thereby success on the pop charts. That is no longer the case. As far as R&B is concered it has been damaged because it has virtually ignored or been ignored by one entire sex of the black community: black men. When Usher has concernts that are only for female concertgoers then there is a major disconnect. A successful male rock or country artist is going to have loads of female fans by default but he won't alienate male record buyers in the process.
Chickens come home to roost. It has never been easy for black male singers to crossover to mainstream because of white society's discomfort with black male sexuality. But at least record companies and black producers tried to find or create such individuals. Now they don't even care if they have black male singers on their labels.
Tell that to the kids today.Unless you're a record executive, you shouldn't measure the value of music by the amount of sales it generates.
They need to bring back *n*sync*