To anybody who's missed this series by Marc Anthony Neal on the painful erosion of R&B, here's your chance to be edified.

1. Rhythm and Bullshit?: The Slow Decline of R&B,
Part One: Rhythm & Business, Cultural Imperialism and the Harvard Report
"Does the soulless sound of contemporary R&B really have its roots in a controversial Harvard study from 1972, an alleged blueprint for the corporate theft of black culture's heritage? Or was it all Clive Davis's idea? The first of a three-part examination of how R&B became big business on the way to becoming irrelevant."

2. Part Two: New Jack Swing, Mary J. Blige and the Coming Hegemony of Hip-Hop
"In the 1990s, hip-hop and R&B cross-pollinated to create the crossover sound of hip-hop soul and conquer urban radio. But was anybody keeping it real?"

3. Part Three: Media Conglomeration, Label Consolidation, and Payola
"Throughout the late 1990s, the Clear Channeling of radio and record-label Universalizing left untold numbers of R&B acts undiscovered."

(update 7/22//05)

4. The Slow Decline of R&B, Epilogue
"If the best new artists are shut out from urban radio, what's an R&B fan to do? Here, some suggestions of where to look for the genre's current torchbearers."  ¶ 6/30/2005 06:49:00 AM