Analysis of R&B genre

Rhythm and Blues or R&B msuic, was originally termed "race music" and basically included anything intended anything intended for African-American audiences. A combination of jazz, gospel, and blues, the term "R&B" was made in the 1940's in the United States for use as a less offensive marketing term.

Fashion - (MEN) 

Men in R&B videos are normally topless or are dressed in a very stereotypical way of black men during that time period of baggy jeans and baggy shirts with trainers. The minimal clothing some R&B artist is to engage the younger female audience.  This also creates an aspiration for the male audience to have a good body because it also creates a correlation between having a good body and getting a good looking woman like the one in the screenshot below.

This is an example of a topless artist

Nelly - Dilemma ft. Kelly Rowland is an example of R&B. This song was released in 2002.

This is a typical convention of an R&B video in 2002. As you can see all the people present in the screenshot are black. This shows that the main target audience were black as that was the originality of R&B music however as the years go on different cultures have began to listen to R&B music which will be explored in greater detail later on. 

I have taken screenshots from the website below to support the conventions of R&B

http://www.slideshare.net/Flora1993/conventions-of-rb

Work which is a recent R&B song (2016) by Rihanna and Drake slightly strays from the convention of having all black people in their music video. As you can see from the screenshot below there is a white girl in the video. This video also strays from the convention that woman wear minimal clothing the woman to the right of Rihanna is also not the bikini slim woman. I feel Rihanna put her in this video to show that you don't have to slim to be portrayed as beautiful.

There are close up shots of revealing body parts this is to target the male audience and keep them engaged. There make-up is always bold and defined (Rihanna black lipstick). The aim of the colour of the make up is to make their eyes attractive. To show some power they also wear red which also has many conventions to it.

Another R&B example is Neyo (2009) - Independent this does not follow the normal convention. In R&Bs video before you would see woman wearing hardly any clothes to appeal to the main audience however in Neyo - Independent he is wearing a suit. This could represent class or status is that society.

Normally the location of an R&B video would be in a nightclub like Drake Rihanna Work or in the streets like Nelly Dilemma video. However this subverts the stereotype because the video is based in a work office. 

The music topic is still based on what you would expect from an R&B (Music about woman) just they respect woman more and its not about the woman features its about the women being independent. Neyo is singing about liking a woman because she looks after herself whereas most other R&B music is about females sexual aspects.