Entry · catalog no. 1246
neo-soul
/ /ˌniːoʊ ˈsoʊl/ /NEE-oh SOHL
noun · New York and Philadelphia industry offices; artists drawn from Richmond, Dallas, Philadelphia, Brooklyn and elsewhere · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
A marketing category, coined inside the record business, for a wave of Black artists who built on 1970s soul instrumentation and phrasing rather than the programmed R and B dominant at the time.
“Every label wanted a neo-soul act after Baduizm sold.”
2.
Loosely, a sound — live drums and Rhodes, a vocal that sits behind the beat, lyrics that run toward interiority and social consciousness — regardless of when it was made.
“That record is neo-soul whether he likes the word or not.”
Origin & Attribution
The term was coined by Kedar Massenburg, the executive who managed DAngelo and signed Erykah Badu to Kedar Entertainment, and who served as president of Motown Records from 1997 to 2004. He applied it as a sales category around the release of Badus Baduizm on 11 February 1997, after DAngelos Brown Sugar had shown there was a market. The music itself was not invented by the label: Meshell Ndegeocellos Plantation Lullabies and Tony Toni Tones Sons of Soul, both 1993, had already laid out the template. What Massenburg supplied was a shelf to put it on, and many of the artists filed under it have rejected the name ever since.
1993
Meshell Ndegeocellos Plantation Lullabies and Tony Toni Tones Sons of Soul establish the template
1997
Baduizm is released and Massenburg markets the sound as neo-soul from Motown
2007
Marsha Ambrosiuss mixtape Neo Soul Is Dead stages the labels funeral
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
New York and Philadelphia industry offices; artists drawn from Richmond, Dallas, Philadelphia, Brooklyn and elsewhere · 1990s
Spoken by
Record executives, music press, and Black listening audiences; contested by the artists themselves
$NEOSOUThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady29 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
66/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1997
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@bxgriot
The Bronx, NY
@phillyanne
Philadelphia, PA
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Portia K. Maultsby, Neo Soul, Timeline of African American Music, Carnegie Hall, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities
scholarly reference
■
Portia K. Maultsby, Soul, in Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby, eds., African American Music: An Introduction, 2nd ed., Routledge, 2015, pp. 277-298
book chapter
■
+ Cite a sourceErykah Badu, Baduizm, Kedar and Universal Records, 11 February 1997
album
See also