AN EXCELLENT QUESTION!

WHO KILLED THE R&B GROUP?

2004 was the last time an R&B group made anything close to a comeback. That's when Destiny's Child reunited after a short break to release their fourth and final studio album, Destiny Fulfilled. Since then, unless you count the middling success of P. Diddy's male quintet, Day26, R&B groups and duos -- male and female -- have gone the way of the compact disc.

EN VOGUE IN THEIR HEYDAY



And their absence isn't easy to miss. From the beginning, vocal groups have long dominated R&B. Both the Supremes and the Temptations made the R&B group a mainstay of '60s pop music. The tradition continued with the Jackson Five in the '70s; DeBarge, New Edition and Guy in the '80s; and Dru Hill and the record-busting girl group TLC in the '90s. From 1991-2001, every month, you'd see an R&B group hanging out on the Top 10 Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop chart. Jagged Edge, 112 and Destiny's Child continued the popularity of R&B groups into the new millennium. But not for long.

For one thing, the music changed. Today's version of chart-topping R&B, hijacked by techno-club production, overdubbed vocals and hip-hop cadence, has sparked a fierce debate about the state of popular soul music. So which came first: the demise of the singing soul group or the deterioration of R&B music?

Who -- or what -- killed the R&B group?

WHOLE ARTICLE: THEROOT