The R&B king of this generation is most likely Chris Brown even though the idea of setting the mood to Chris Breezy’s “Take You Down” makes me cringe. I’m also 57 years old so it is what it is. Being old really taints your view of shit and sometimes I do want to yell at the top of my lungs “You kids don’t know shit about music” whilst shaking my fist angrily as I blast some Luther Vandross. I’m not going to do that but that’s how I fell sometimes. Anyway the whole Jacquees king of R&B debate wrapped itself up with pretty much with nobody including Jacquees’ mom consenting to the idea that he was ever in the running for the crown.
And I wish the debate would have ended there but it didn’t.
Nope.
We couldn’t leave good enough alone.
We had to get Robert Kelly into the conversation.
For the sake of debate let’s just pretend like R. Kelly wasn’t a sexual deviant and focus exclusively on the music. Cool? Cool. The good people over here at the accountant firm of DeGrate, DeGrate and DeGrate have crunched the numbers, ran the stats and R. Kelly is not or has he ever been the undisputed king of R&B. Despite what your aunties would like you to believe he has never worn the crown but he was definitely in the neighborhood for a good 8-9 year run; so I can understand your confusion. So you’re probably wondering who the real R&B king is? It’s Usher. Let me tell you how.
R Kelly only predates Usher by 1 year. R. Kelly and Public Announcement’s “Born Into the 90's” dropped in 1992 and Usher came out in 1993 at the age of 14 with "Call Me a Mack" off of the Poetic Justice soundtrack. I’m not going to hold you “Born Into the 90's” charted and out sold Usher’s debut album “Usher” that only went gold. The the 90’s goes to because he dropped 3 back to back to back multiplatinum bangers (it almost makes you forget that he was married to 15 year old Aaliyah at the time, almost). The only 4 people that had a better 90’s run than R. Kelly are Madonna, Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston and the motherfucking GOAT Mariah Carey. So if this was a king of the 90’s debate it would definitely be R. Kelly hands down. Usher didn’t even make any real waves until he dropped “My Way” in 1997 and killed the game. You couldn’t escape "You Make Me Wanna..." which went double platinum on it’s own.
Let's fast forward to 2001.
Usher didn’t put the game in the chokehold until 8701 dropped in and went 4 times platinum then he followed up with Confessions that sold 12 million in 2004. You know who sold more albums than Usher in 2004? Nobody. Usher moved more units of Confessions than R. Kelly did with Untitled, Double Up, TP.3 Reloaded and Happy People/U Saved Me combined. Kells dropped 6 solo projects in addition to 2 joint ventures with Jay-Z and still failed to have a better 2000 – 2009 run than Usher Raymond who sold over 20 million records all by himself.
Let’s keep it a buck both artist have lost a step in the new decade but Usher vs R. Kelly post 2010 isn’t even a fair fight. Usher has killed it on several seasons of NBC’s The Voice. He owns 3% of Tidal. He’s a co-owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers and still managing to go platinum unlike Robert Kelly. The last R. Kelly hit is a song he stole from Bow Wow; "I'm a Flirt (Remix)" and that was in 2007. Once we add the Trap in the closest series to this and when he was running around wearing a mask calling himself the Pied Piper of R&B I don’t even understand how this was even a debate. Can R. Kelly sing? Absolutely. Is he the king of R&B? No fucking way.
I could stop here and I should stop here but let’s be honest with ourselves if it wasn’t for Usher we’d have to give it to Luther. Even though Luther was singing to Freddie Jackson his catalog is untouchable and timeless. I mean who doesn’t love Luther?
Don't you remember you told me you loved me baby?
Jean DeGrate has spoken
