The Rules of R&B Are Being Rewritten

Today's rising R&B artists don't sit in their assigned seats, and I love it.

The first time I heard Khamari, I was on a late-night drive in Atlanta, windows down just enough for the Fall air to drift in. His voice floated over a bed of guitar strums, strings, and soft drums like it knew exactly where my thoughts were headed. “Doctor, My Eyes” instantly became one of my favorite songs. It didn’t feel like traditional R&B. It didn’t feel fully indie, either. It felt like something unnameable, but completely familiar.

That’s the magic I find in a lot of the new wave of R&B musicians. They’re artists who aren’t concerned with sitting in an assigned seat. Instead, they pull from every corner of their record collections and weave their inspirations into something that feels authentically them. Khamari, Isaia Huron, and CARI are three names that I keep coming back to recently. And not just for the songs themselves, but for how freely they move between worlds.

Khamari: Soul Over The Skyline

Boston-born, now LA-based, Khamari creates music that feels like it was designed for life in motion: driving down the interstate, flying in a window seat looking out at the clouds, walking through a familiar neighborhood. His sound lives somewhere between Musiq Soulchild and John Mayer’s intimacy and Coldplay’s stadium anthems.

Listen to “These Four Walls” or “Lonely In The Jungle” and you’ll hear it. You’ll hear the lush instrumentation, the cinematic sweeps, the quiet lyrical moments that still feel massive. He doesn’t just write good songs; he builds little universes that allow you to escape.

Isaia Huron: The Genre-Fluid Storyteller

Isaia Huron’s music has the kind of authenticity that makes you feel like you’re eavesdropping on someone’s journal. Raised by his pastor father and choir director mother in South Carolina, Isaia blends the heart of R&B with the confessional stylings of indie folk music. There are elements of alt-rock and funk in his production as well. Isaia writes, produces, and performs a lot of his music himself, which makes somebody like me want to tap in even more.

His newest singles, “FIDDY” and “LIST CRAWLER,” have me so excited for what’s to come on his new album ‘CONCUBANIA’ (dropping August 8, 2025).

CARI: Flux, Fluidity & Finding Light

West London-born and musically shaped by both rainy streets and the church (shoutout to so much of the new generation of artists still being raised in the church, despite what people online seem to think), CARI’s debut EP Flux arrives as her breakthrough ––– literally and emotionally.

As she shared in her recent NME interview, “Colder in June” is a standout not just sonically but philosophically too. She “alchemized her pain into play” through extremely vulnerable songwriting and genre‑fluid arrangements.

Listening back, those gospel roots come alive in unexpected places: in vocal runs, in call-and-response layering. But just as much as I hear that, I hear Brandy when I listen to “Bleeding”. I hear Prince on “Phuckups (Hold Me).” I hear my girl Hayley Williams elsewhere. It makes for such an interesting listen. And it makes me hit play over and over.

A Freedom in Sound

What ties them all together is that refusal to be contained. They’re not making “R&B with a twist.” They don’t feel like they need to have a classic ‘90s sample to be appreciated. They don’t feel the need to follow what the masses are saying they want. They see value in developing a core fanbase that is a fan of the musician, and not just a fan of a faceless, trendy song.

They’re making music that feels like them, full stop. The same way I go from listening to Bryson Tiller and Jazmine Sullivan to MGMT and Tame Impala without blinking an eye ––– today’s rising artists embody that same genre-fluid mindset.

Maybe we see it more now because streaming services have made music so accessible that artists can be discovered without a record label or a radio station dictating that discoverability. Artists are in the driver's seat more now than ever.

Whatever it is, I’m thankful for it.

R&B has always been about emotion. It’s about the truth of moments, whether that’s whispered in your ear or shouted into the sky. Khamari, Isaia Huron, and CARI are just some of the many who are taking that truth and letting it breathe in new spaces.

And if that means blurring the lines until we can’t tell where one genre ends and another begins? Well, maybe that’s exactly where the future of Rhythm & Blues was headed all along.