"My love for neo-soul is unmatched"
It oozes the powerful streams of black love, a stepping stone, a soap box to talk about social injustice in the black community. Creating a bridge between R&B and Hip Hop from sampled tracks from past legends to experimental instrumentals that inspire to uplift.
"Heavily based in soul music, neo soul is distinguished by a less conventional sound than its contemporary R&B counterpart, with incorporated elements ranging from jazz, funk, hip hop and electronic to pop, fusion, and African music." Neo soul - Wikipedia
Neo-Soul is like food to my soul, which is one of the many reasons I tend not to publicly speak about it, as I use it as a healing factor in my personal experience called life.
As a creative I see the colours that the sound of Neo-Soul creates. Into the warm orange and brown tones with hints of gold and red. Its peaceful, its light, its the sunsets and the leaves of autumn.
"I see sounds"
The reminder that black people are descendants of King's and Queens. This fusion is created by the roughness of the Hip Hop and Beat blended into the honey yoak of Spoken Word on instrumentals of Soul creates a timeless genre.
A masterpiece. How can something so impact full be deep rooted in the underground and seems to fall off the face of the world (popularity) but is still loved by its community (black people).
This is why I have the upmost respect for my idols for carrying the torch. My personally favourite Radio Dee Jays in this genre suchas Destiny David from my local community station Roots FM (London, UK) to Jenny Francis from the former Black owned Commerical station Choice FM (London, UK).
My Personal Favourite Artists & more:
Omar Lye Fook
Robert Glaplaser
The Florist
Musqic Soulchild
The Foreign Exchange
Erykah Badu
Jill Scott
Ledeis
Angie Stone
Amel Larrieux
Dwele
The list can go on, thank you for pioneering a sound that helped mold me into the powerful and shameless black woman I inspire to be. This music makes me believe, its refreshing, its helpful and lastly spiritual.
"The name of the style of the music has generated almost as much controversy as it has hype. The common complaint with “neo-soul” as a descriptive phrase is that by calling something “neo” (or “new” or “nü”), it ironically becomes doomed to languish in a particular time and place. That something is only new for so long, and thus has no staying power. It’s a fair complaint, though while use of “neo soul” as a commonly accepted phrase has more or less fallen out of favor, the music certainly hasn’t. What distinguishes neo-soul from, simply, soul is the broad palette of sounds that it incorporates. Soul is, of course, the foundation, but artists such as Erykah Badu, D’Angelo and Maxwell took those classic R&B textures and fused them with rock, jazz, funk, hip-hop, Latin and African styles to create something less conventional, yet still deeply soulful." 10 Best Neo-Soul Albums (2016)
This chapter of my love for neo-soul is just the beginning I even have a show dedicated to this golden era as it seems to be forgotten when it's still important to have around in this day and age.
To be continued...
Thank you for reading this far.
C.C. x