The modern day soul music, Neo-soul music,  was created by several different artists in the music industry.  Neo-Soul music is a blend of contemporary R&B and 1970s soul with a twist of hip hop. Neo-soul, R&B and soul music differ in many ways. Although R&B and soul music have more similarities, Neo-Soul is made to be more emotional. Therefore, this type of music tends to have a deeper meaning than R&B and soul combined.

 It is believed that Kedar Massenburg of Motown Records created the term “neo-soul” in the late 1990s. However, many people believe that neo-soul was created with the release of music from a band called Tony! Toni! Tone! and with a sound released on the debut album of the singer D’Angelo. Further down the line in 1997, Erykah Badu, an artist on Motown, released her debut LP which featured a lot of Neo-Soul. With the success of her music, Kedar Massenburg decided to transition a lot of music from Motown to use that style of music. Nowadays, the Neo-Soul artists who have made an affect on mainstream music would be Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, and Alicia Keys.

During the late 90s and early 2000s, many Neo-Soul artists did not crossover to mainstream music just for the simple fact of not wanting to make music just for the sales. These artists would rather focus on keeping the pure focus of this genre of music, which is artistic expression. This shows how different Neo-Soul music is compared other genres.

 Neo-soul music is still around today because it is still being utilized by several artists. Junior Nate McDonald stated, “It’s definitely the type of music you can chill to.”  With today’s artist like the band The Internet, Neo-Soul music is starting to branch out into mainstream music once again. There are still many uprising artists who partake in this genre, such as The Weeknd, Ne-Yo, Angie Stone and Adele. This ensures that Neo-soul music is slowly becoming a more known genre of music all over, instead of how it used to be solely on R&B outlets and Black Entertainment Television.