The New Breed Of Male R&B Singers Breaks Through

There’s a new wave of male R&B stars, pushing the genre in a different direction.

And their innovations have struck gold.

After years of standing in the shadows of R&B’s towering women — Beyoncé, Rihanna and Mary J. Blige — progressive singers like Miguel, The Weeknd, Aloe Blacc and Elijah Blake are evening the score with major hits.

“Finally, there’s room in the market for males who aren’t falling into R&B stereotypes,” says Blake, 25, whose music references everything from Depeche Mode to ’50s doo-wop. “There wasn’t a window for us before.”

Over the last three months, the Canadian R&B singer known as The Weeknd (age 25, born Abel Tesfaye) has shot three very different-sounding songs into Billboard’s Pop Top Ten. They range from the darkly orchestral ballad “Earned It” to the Michael Jackson-style, bright retro-pop song “Can’t Feel My Face,” the current No. 2 song in the country. The star performed it before 60,000 people during a guest appearance at Taylor Swift’s recent show at MetLife Stadium.

Three weeks ago, Miguel, 29, saw his latest album, “Wildheart,” open at No. 2 on Billboard’s Top 200 album list, fired by a style that blows away common R&B clichés with raging rock guitars.

Such achievements follow last year’s breakthrough of Aloe Blacc, 36, who, in fronting the Avicii single “Wake Me Up,” married his soulful vocal to a never-before-heard amalgam of electronica and country music. “Wake” sold more than 4 million copies in the U.S., went Top Five here, and held the No. 1 singles spot in more than 30 countries around the world.

Blacc’s success mirrored the equally innovative soul sound created by Frank Ocean in 2012 on his No. 2 breakthrough album, “Channel Orange.”

Chart triumphs like these are giving non-hip-hop black males a higher profile than they’ve had in years. “There haven’t been any stars who’ve been able to grab the mantle of Prince and Michael Jackson,” says Nelson George, author of many books about the history of black music. “Usher tried but, for whatever reason, he dropped the ball.”

Shaila Scott, a DJ who goes simply by Shaila on New York’s R&B station WBLS, gives seminal credit for the rise of the new stars to the Web. “Whereas people might have been looking only at certain vessels for their music to come through before, like radio, albums or word of mouth, now you can expose your music through all the avenues of social media,” she says. “Nobody may have heard of you at one moment, and at the end of the week, your song can be heard by millions.”

At the same time, the Web has exposed fans to more sounds, stoking a hunger for innovation.

“People talk about the problems of streaming,” Blake says. “But streaming has helped blur the lines of music. Listeners are linked to all kinds of songs, not just ones from a single genre.”

The Web has special meaning for R&B artists because, says George, “R&B radio is not the force it was. Hip-hop radio has replaced it. At one point, in New York, there were three or four R&B stations. Now ’BLS is the only one.”

For that reason, George says, “Anyone who is coming from R&B has to figure out how they can get heard. If you’re a younger black male singer, you’re very aware that what people listen to is very different. How people consume music is very different. To put out a traditional R&B record, what’s the advantage in that?”

Especially since the sound of male R&B has been stagnated by stereotypes for an insufferably long time. Ever since the ’90s, young male R&B stars — from Chris Brown to Trey Songz to Tyrese — have rigidly modeled themselves on R. Kelly. At the time, hip hop threatened to kill R&B, or at least make it look old hat. To combat that, Kelly shrunk the melodies of R&B to suit the sound of rappers while also imitating their super-stud characters.

Shaila feels that trend limited the stars’ musicianship. “They weren’t trying to play instruments,” she says. “They just put a rapper on the record, and focused on the beat, not the melody.”

Blake says he had to fight the industry to keep rappers off his record. He also broke the mold with his more sensitive character. “Women listeners of my generation realize there’s strength in being in touch with your sensitive side,” he says.

At the same time, Blake believes the black community itself often enforces old macho stereotypes on its singers. “A lot of male artists are afraid to live their truths,” he says. “They’re afraid of being called weird or gay by our own community.”

Female R&B stars haven’t suffered as many assumptions about who they should be, which helped them break away from stereotypes into a broader pop sound.

Shaila thinks the womens’ dominance over men also has to do with the media. “If you have 50 magazines, how many of them will put a woman on the cover over a man?,” she asks. “You’d put a Beyoncé before a Miguel.”

Slowly, though, that may be changing. At the moment, males dominate the ballads on ’BLS, the station’s most popular song style.

Blake thinks the emerging R&B males will keep advancing, so long as they keep innovating.

“It’s our responsibility to move the culture forward,” he says. “We need the music to change.”

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