Neo Soul
Neo soul is a style of R&B that brings back the warmth of 1970s soul and mixes it with hip hop beats, jazz chords and live playing.
Songs tend to be slow to mid-tempo and loose, with electric piano, deep bass, relaxed drums and conversational, heartfelt singing. The style grew out of soul and R&B in the United States and broke through in the mid-1990s, and the name was coined later that decade by record executive Kedar Massenburg to market it. It set itself apart from the glossy, heavily programmed contemporary R&B of the same years by sounding more organic and by drawing on older soul, jazz and funk.
Artists it is known for: D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Maxwell.
- Family
- R&B & Soul
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- United States, early 1990s
- Also called
- neo-soul
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 21%
About 17,000 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have neo soul among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Neo Soul artists
Frank Ocean
Sade
Alicia Keys
Amy Winehouse
Ms. Lauryn Hill
Ravyn Lenae
Erykah Badu
Mary J. Blige
Janet Jackson
Solange
The neo soul artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.