text=This stuff was MASSIVE in the late 80s and 90s. It took the hipness of rap and the smooth, sexy grooves of RnB, and came out sounding very pop. Even the scandal of Milli Vanilli--which was a shame, because they were neither the first nor the last to do that, they were just the ones who got caught--did little to slow the genre's irresistable popularity. But despite that, as it evolved into the 90s it became less groove-focused and more artist-focused. A late arrival of New Jack Swing, Boys II Men, completely took the genre into a new direction: subdued, minimal beat (christ, some tracks have nothing more than a metronome counter), and them, front and centre, bellowing out annoying, modulating oversinging that spans seventeen thousand octaves and lasts thirty hours long. This overused technique, exploited the most by Mariah Carey, would segue into the genre Nu Soul, dominated by picky, sassy divas emulating her, who would in turn drive the idea of the artist as a companion to the music into the ground and render the genre completely and totally unlistenable. Fucking bitches.
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