There’s a reason people still argue about ’90s R&B like it just happened last week. Not because of nostalgia, though that’s real. It’s because the music actually holds up. The songwriting, the vocal performances, the production choices — they weren’t trends. They were benchmarks. And a lot of what gets called “great R&B” today is … Read more

Picture this: it’s 1991, you’re thirteen years old, and you’re watching MTV when a music video comes on that looks nothing like anything you’ve seen before. No hairspray, no spandex, just a guy in a cardigan screaming into a microphone in a high school gymnasium. By the time “Smells Like Teen Spirit” ended, something had … Read more