3. Roberta Flack
As she wove classical rigour with gospel warmth, jazz-inflected soul, blues, and folk, Roberta Flack quietly laid a new groundwork for Black popular music, deepening R&B’s introspection whilst seeding the hushed spaciousness that would shape neo-soul and Quiet Storm. Her mastery of reinterpretation was equally striking: minimalist arrangements and romantic restraint marked her re-voicings of Cohen, Dylan, Simon, and Carole King, forging a signature later echoed by Badu, Hill, and Solange, among many others. True to her belief that “music reaches beyond age, race, nationality and religion”, her legacy embodies that very ethos – one she herself voiced when she sang, “And it would last ’til the end of time”.
4. D'Angelo
For many, the rarity of D’Angelo’s sensual gravity may have seemed enough to define him, though it was a mantle he never sought. More unprecedented was his tenderness, paired with an instinctive reshaping of Black musical lineage that shifted the pulse of soul and R&B. In resisting celebrity, he guarded the solitude needed for his art, fusing church-born fervour with hip-hop grit and funk’s molten low-end. His smoky falsetto, layered harmonies, and woozy, behind-the-beat drag formed an audible cinema whose ability to enliven body and space endures. Across Brown Sugar, Voodoo, and the 2014 political psych-funk of Black Messiah, his legacy contributes richly to the canon from which he long drew.
5. Angie Stone
D’Angelo’s one-time collaborator (and partner) carved herself a solo career out of hip-hop singing, songwriting and arranging, paying dues whilst waiting to break through. As the unrivalled Queen of neo-soul, Angie Stone remade the tradition into an irresistible amalgam of mellow vocal stylistics, arresting, dramatic rhythms, and ‘classic’ samples. Earthy yet divine, exquisite yet raw, Stone soul kept the spirit of emotional intensity and syncopated beats alive, without ever resorting to nostalgia, or relying on the twenty-first-century vogue for retro techniques and tonalities.
