10 Best R&B Albums of 2021

A highly subjective look back at the year’s definitive R&B offerings

R&B has always been uniquely suited to speak to the heart, laying bare the gut-wrenching emotions we too often suppress.

In the latest in a long line of years defined by anger, fear, and isolation, we looked to a wide variety of R&B artists across styles and generations to bring back that loving feeling.

Here are the 10 that delivered most distinctively and evocatively:

10. Prince - Welcome 2 America

Leave it to Prince, ever the futurist, to posthumously capture the sinister peculiarities of 2021 with an album recorded in 2010. Welcome 2 America offers dry commentary on our technological dependency, digitally induced isolation, and the insidious culture of exploitation that has morphed with our nation since its perverted inception.

Musically, the album blends eerie jazz overtones with muted funk rhythms for a deceptively warm sound that nonetheless bristles with paranoia and discontent. As global as Welcome 2 America is in scope, the most powerful moments come when Prince’s eventually fatal struggles with addiction weave their way into the subtext, as discussed in my initial take on the album. Yet, in these fraught times, it’s oddly comforting to have Prince’s wry wisdom and innate humanity to guide us through the storm.

For the Playlist: “Born 2 Die,” “Stand Up and B Strong,” “When She Comes”

9. Jazmine Sullivan - Heaux Tales

I have to be honest, I feel a little uncomfortable listening to Jazmine Sullivan’s fearless fourth album; like a guy on the wall of a dive bar ladies’ room at 1:30AM. Heaux Tales is a pull-no-punches treatise on sexuality and womanhood. It wrestles in the rawest possible way, vocally, musically, and lyrically with young women’s ongoing battle to define their sexuality even as society attempts to define them by it.

Sullivan — a powerhouse singer of the first order — dials back her signature virtuosic vocal acrobatics in favor of a more throatily conversational delivery that feels every bit as organic as her early work does stylized. The end result is an album that’s gut-wrenchingly relatable to Sullivan’s female peers, and just maybe a little enlightening to males with the fortitude to take the journey.

For the Playlist: “Pick Up Your Feelings,” “Pricetags” (featuring Anderson .Paak), “The Other Side”

8. Raheem DeVaughn & Apollo Brown - Lovesick

I’m a sucker for slow jams with “knock”, and Lovesick delivers them in spades. Raheem DeVaughn, R&B’s self-proclaimed “Love King,” and underground hip-hop producer extraordinaire Apollo Brown serve up a dozen heaters as suited for riding out as making out.

DeVaughn, who can occasionally become enamored with the elasticity of his voice to the detriment of song construction, benefits from the taught templates provided by Brown’s rumbling beats. In turn, the airy melodiousness of DeVaughn’s vocals accentuates Brown’s rugged soulfulness that sometimes gets buried beneath the boom-bap in his hip-hop work.

For the Playlist: “When a Man,” “I Still Love You,” “Zaddy” (featuring 3D Na’Tee)

7. Pink Sweat$ - PINK PLANET

As imagined by up-and-coming Philly soul modernist Pink Sweat$, PINK PLANET is a dizzying utopia of romance, prosperity-and most importantly- live instrumentation.

The album’s slick synths levitate atop Sweat$’s understatedly weighty drums, while his rich voice seeps into the open spaces like warm syrup.

Equally apt as a writer, he keeps most of the songs under three minutes in deference to the algorithmic boogie of the streaming dance without sacrificing structure and dynamic progression. “At My Worst,” his guilty pleasure earworm with Kehlani, is the year’s would-be contemporary hits radio staple that slipped through the cracks.

Keep an eye on the man whose pants match his name in years to come. At some point, the population on PINK PLANET will explode.

For the Playlist: “Magic,” “PINK MONEY,” “Not Alright,” “At My Worst (featuring Kehlani)

6. James Blake - Friends That Break Your Heart

“Only love can break you more the more you care,” James Blakes laments early in the title track off his haunting 5th album. Indeed, if 2019’s affirmational Assume Form celebrated the alchemy of two damaged beings connecting to create (or connecting through the creation of) the ultimate elixir, Friends That Break Your Heart embodies the ravaging dissolution of that union.

Digital soul can be a mixed bag, the coldness of the synthesized instrumentation often stripping it of feeling. In Blake’s case, it heightens emotion, his balmy vocals sinking into the long notes and open spaces, seemingly searching for an epiphany amid the technological jungle. If your friends don’t break your heart, this album will.

For the Playlist: “Coming Back” (featuring SZA), “I’m So Blessed You’re Mine,” “Say What You Will”

5. Anthony Hamilton - Love is the New Black

In a year of fear, anger, and sheer exhaustion, Anthony Hamilton delivered an homage to love’s staggering power to build us up and break us down.

A vintage soul man in every sense of the term, Hamilton organically pairs his blues-drenched voice with largely modern instrumentation. It’s as if he’s conjuring the genre’s cathartic and redemptive power of past eras into the modern world.

Hamilton has proven over the course of a nearly 20 year career that he is a more than able songwriter, so the minimalist structure of many of Love is the New Black’s standouts is intentional.

The album is an exercise in feeling over form, with Hamilton’s vocals dragging us from the heights of passion to the depths of despair, the sheer emotionality of humanity aching through every note.

For the Playlist: “White Hennessy,” “Superstar” (Duet with Jennifer Hudson), “Pillows”

4. Snoh Aalegra — Temporary Highs in the Violet Skies

Snoh Aalegra embodies the “Melancholy Poet Coffee Shop Girl.” That’s the the less theatrical, but far more nuanced cousin of the mythical “Manic Pixie Dream Girl.”

She’s the sultry chanteuse parked unassumingly in the corner booth scribbling longhand musings into a tattered notebook. She’s in love with being in love, as much for the pain of the descent as the soaring joy of the takeoff.

If you were to swipe a copy of that binder and set it to an ethereally soulful soundtrack, it would sound a lot like Temporary Highs in the Violet Skies, Aalegra’s haunting meditation on connections forged, frayed, and squandered amid the virtual white noise of the 21st Century.

The songs on Temporary Highs are an arresting amalgamation of digital detachment (the production), gut-wrenching intimacy (the writing), and subtle emotional nuance (the vocals) that’s impeccably conducive to sharing with a special person, or getting lost in all by your lonesome.

For the Playlist: “In Your Eyes,” “Tangerine Dream,” “Dying 4 Your Love”

3. Silk Sonic - An Evening with Silk Sonic

An Evening With Silk Sonic harkens back to R&B’s most vibrant era, and it does it with unapologetically over-the-top showmanship.

Whether your bag is rollicking funk romps or sinewy ballads, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak got you covered with their slickly produced and cheekily rendered brand of neo-nostalgia.

In my initial thoughts on the album, I expressed mild disappointment that, for all their spirited antics, Mars and .Paak fail to deliver a collection truly worthy of sitting on the top shelf with their influences like Earth, Wind & Fire and The Jacksons. I stand by it. The album is too derivative to prove timeless. But in its particular moment in time, An Evening with Silk Sonic is just what the doctor ordered: lush arrangements, dynamic instrumentation, irresistible hooks, and a dash of Bootsy Collins. You can never go wrong with Bootsy, baba!

For the Playlist: “Smokin’ Out the Window,” “Put On a Smile,” “Skate,” “Blast Off”

2. Adele — 30

Adele has always been a soul singer - despite the relentless branding exercise deployed by a corporate machine with a vested interest in creating a substantive international pop star to justify its own existence.

Every eruption, flutter, and inflection of her vocal style can be rooted back to the soul masters of eras past.

However, her superlative fourth effort is the first Adele project to feel like an R&B album. The pop adorned torch ballads upon which her brand is built are sprinkled in, but the pillars of 30 harken straight back to the dynamic arrangements of The Marvelettes (“Cry Your Heart Out”), the emotive urgency of Aretha Franklin (“I Drink Wine”), the orchestral flourish of the Supremes (“Love is a Game”), and the bluesy nakedness of Amy Winehouse (“All Night Parking”).

We even get a playful ’90s style club banger befitting a young Mariah, complete with muted whistle register behind the chorus (“Oh My God”).

Unlike so many 21st Century retro plays (**cough**Silk Sonic**cough**), 30 is far more than just an exercise in form. Adele and her producers judiciously utilize the vintage sounds to musically embody the heartache and soul searching she so poetically evokes in lyrics exploring her divorce, motherhood, and personal growth.

For the Playlist: “My Little Love,” “Cry Your Heart Out,” “I Drink Wine,” “Love is a Game”

1. Jam & Lewis - Jam & Lewis: Volume One

In a moment where R&B is too often about a “vibe” - a statically ambient atmosphere - legendary production duo Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis demonstrate the timeless power of songcraft on their long overdue debut album.

Each song on Volume One is every bit as effective as the waviest Gen Z bop at creating a mood. But they also tell a story, taking you on a journey of exploration, musically and lyrically, through the human emotions that evoke that mood.

The vocals are handled by an all-star cast of R&B icons perfectly fitted to the tracks they helm. Mary J. Blige infuses “Spinnin” with her singular blend of pathos, heart, and defiant resilience, creating not only a definitive Mary moment, but an anthem for the struggle to reconcile 2020’s dystopia with 2021's supposed return to a “new normal.”

“Somewhat Loved (There You Go Breakin’ My Heart)” puts Mariah Carey’s seven-octave voice to full use in conveying both the soaring highs and crashing lows wrought by affairs of the heart. Toni Braxton delivers arguably a career-best vocal performance on “Happily Unhappy,” a slow burning odyssey of romantic reckoning.

As songwriters and producers, Jam & Lewis have never been more assured. Volume One masterfully, but never ostentatiously, brings the craftsmanship of ’80s and ’90s R&B into the 21st Century, neither pandering nor leaning on nostalgia, for a timeless love letter to the genre upon which they built their 40 year legacy.

For the Playlist: “Spinnin” (featuring Mary J. Blige), “Somewhat Loved (There You Go Breakin’ My Heart)” (featuring Mariah Carey), “Happily Unhappy” (featuring Toni Braxton), “Do What I Do” (featuring Charlie Wilson)

Honorable Mentions (In no particular order)

Durand Jones & the Indications - Private Space (Take this one as your chaser to Silk Sonic and thank me later.) Doja Cat - Planet Her Giveon - When It’s All Said and Done… Take Time Joyce Wrice - Overgrown Leon Bridges - Gold-Diggers Sound