For the last six-plus years, 360\u00b0Sound has been providing our readers with exclusive interviews with authors of new music-related books. In this installment of our \u201cAuthor Talk\u201d series, we\u2019re joined by Kiana Fitzgerald, author of the new book Queens of R&B (out now on Gemini). Fitzgerald is a Texas-based journalist, podcaster, essayist, and cultural critic. She has written stories for numerous publications, including Paper Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Texas Monthly. Her debut book, Ode to Hip-Hop: 50 Albums That Define 50 Years of Trailblazing Music, was published by Running Press.<\/p>\n
Queens of R&B is part of the Queens of\u2026 series, which celebrates influential music genres and the female pioneers that defined them. The 173-page illustrated book looks at the evolution of R&B music over the last four decades as told through the stories of 10 female artists.<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s Note: This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. Scroll to the bottom to view the full video interview on our YouTube channel @360degreesound.<\/p>\n
360\u00b0Sound: You\u2019ve described Queens of R&B as a \u201clabor of love.\u201d Tell us about your interest in R&B and why you were excited to write this entry in the series.<\/p>\n
Kiana Fitzgerald: R&B is the foundation of my life. I talk about hip-hop a lot because hip-hop is the first genre that I fell in love with. But R&B is a very, very close second. I remember being a young child and hearing a lot of \u201870s, \u201880s, and \u201890s R&B. I was born in 1989, so I remember hearing my mom singing the songs with my sister.<\/p>\n
R&B is incredibly special to me, but it\u2019s also a groundbreaking genre. It\u2019s something that has paved the way for other genres to come forth. R&B is an incredibly important genre, and it\u2019s important to me in my own life. So, when I got the opportunity to write about this book, I was like, \u201cAbsolutely!\u201d<\/p>\n
Janet Jackson is the first artist in the book. You write that without Jackson, \u201cthere would be no alternative R&B, and no contemporary Pop&B\u2026there would be no Britney Spears, no Destiny\u2019s Child or Beyonce, no J. Lo, no Christina Aguilera,\u201d and the list goes on. Talk about the influence of Jackson and why you chose to start the book with her.<\/p>\n
Janet was born into an incredibly talented musical family, and she kind of didn\u2019t have a choice about being an artist. Her father was like. \u2018You\u2019re going to do this.\u2019 Janet had been around music through osmosis, learning, absorbing, and being introduced to new ways of singing. She is someone who was built to be an influential artist.<\/p>\n
When I think about Janet, I think about her standing up for herself and saying, \u201cI\u2019m going to take control. I\u2019m going to dominate my own life. I\u2019m going to say what I want to do, and I\u2019m going to do what I want to do.\u201d And that independence really set the tone for everybody who came after her. Working with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the innovations and music that she produced in her early to mid-career, and even after that, were phenomenal.<\/p>\n
All the artists that you named have said there would be no me without her. That\u2019s why I wrote that. I didn\u2019t just pull that out of thin air. So, all these artists who were attributing their success and their achievements to Janet acknowledge that she is someone who took the time to figure out who she was, and I think that\u2019s incredibly important as an artist. Many artists are just being flung to the wolves and not given an opportunity to really learn about themselves.<\/p>\n
Many of the artists in the book had some of their biggest hits in the 1990s \u2013 Jackson, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Mary J. Blige. The \u201890s are seen as a golden era for R&B. What made that decade so special?<\/p>\n
\u201890s R&B specifically is looked at as the pinnacle of music for a lot of people. And I think what made that era so special is that there was a fluid relationship between hip-hop and R&B. There was just a thrilling crossover that was happening at that time. And today, hip-hop is one of the most popular genres, if not the most popular genre, so when I think of \u201890s R&B, I think of innovation and transformation.<\/p>\n
The artists in the book, from Aaliyah to Mary J. Blige, these artists are people who leaned into the hip-hop and R&B connection. They embraced the sound and the direction. But even the people who were just solely relying on R&B, like Whitney Houston, I think we\u2019re missing the vocals. Back in the \u201890s, there were power ballads left and right. People were belting to the rafters. It was just a different time when it came to vocal affect. Today, we don\u2019t have that as much, which is why I think people want to look back to \u201890s R&B.<\/p>\n
The book spans about 40 years of R&B history. When writing this book and seeing how R&B evolved over the years, what were some of your key takeaways?<\/p>\n
The thing that immediately jumps out to me is the sound. I\u2019m thinking about Janet in the \u201880s, and the industrial sound, the metallic, clamoring sound. I think the way R&B has moved and transformed has definitely been aligned with the sound itself. Let\u2019s say from Janet to Aaliyah. Aaliyah was working with a futuristic sound. She was working with warbling and blips and all these different electronic sounds. And Destiny\u2019s Child were experimenting with that kind of sound as well.<\/p>\n
And with that sound transformation comes topical transformation. But sometimes we\u2019re talking about the same thing. I think the themes of [Janet Jackson\u2019s 1986 album] Control and the themes of [Destiny\u2019s Child\u2019s 1999 LP] The Writings on the Wall are very similar, but I do believe that there is a connectivity between the sound and the message.<\/p>\n
The book is full of interesting anecdotes. One thing I learned is that Beyonc\u00e9 was inspired to write \u201cSurvivor\u201d after a DJ made a crack about Destiny\u2019s Child being like the show Survivor, with all the members leaving or being fired \u2013 who will remain on the island? What\u2019s a tidbit in the book that you found particularly interesting?<\/p>\n
I did not know that Kevin Costner was the reason why the beginning of Whitney Houston\u2019s \u201cI Will Always Love You\u201d starts a cappella.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t know that either. That was very interesting. Lastly, what do you hope readers take away from your book?<\/p>\n
Please pick up this book if you so choose. I know it\u2019s a rough time, so if you can\u2019t, that\u2019s OK. You can get it from the library. I\u2019m very excited to have been tapped to write about a genre that I love so much. I poured a lot of my own personal feelings into it. It\u2019s not a personal book, but it\u2019s written very, very specifically because I do care a lot about this genre. I hope that you take away the love that I have for the genre. R&B is unmatched when it comes to evocativeness, effectiveness, and making you feel something. And I think this book will make you feel something.<\/p>\n
Check out the entire interview with Kiana Fitzgerald on our YouTube channel, @360degreesound:<\/p>\n
Look for Kiana Fitzgerald on Instagram @outfoxxed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the last six-plus years, 360\u00b0Sound has been providing our readers with exclusive interviews with authors of new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-153062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-queens","12":"tag-queens-headlines","13":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}