Black Music Month 2025

This year, Apple Music centers its Black Music Month celebration in R&B, one of contemporary popular music’s most steadfast inspirations. Dive into specially curated collections of albums, playlists, videos, and more.

If you’d had any doubts about the life-changing power of contemporary R&B, you could ask Hearne, Texas, native Charles Williams. Williams is best known as Chalie Boy, the MC who had a radio-conquering single back in 2009 called “I Look Good.” He would only realize the full breadth of his influence in 2024 when Sacramento-hailing singer Victoria Monét won a Grammy for Best New Artist powered largely by her breakout single “On My Mama,” a sultry self-confidence anthem that borrows heavily from “I Look Good.” The win brought a long-retired Chalie Boy plenty of acclaim, but for Monét it was her certification as one of the leading voices of contemporary R&B. Monét, along with voices like Muni Long, Coco Jones, and Leon Thomas, are writing new R&B epics in their own image, building on the rich practices of yesteryear while tapping into the experiences that gave us insta-classics like “Hrs & Hrs,” “On Sight,” and “VIBES DONT LIE.” Join us this Black Music Month in celebrating some of the most exciting voices in contemporary R&B.

For some years now, the must-attend concert experience has been the by-product of an R&B star’s magnum opus. Think Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE and COWBOY CARTER tours, SZA’s SOS tour, or USHER’s Las Vegas residency and 2024 Super Bowl halftime performance, both of which leaned heavily on his game-changing Confessions. It’s hard to think of a time when engaging R&B live has been more of a universal priority, a conceit as easy to explain as the abundance of living legends still tearing up stages. Did you manage to catch Alicia Keys’ autobiographical musical Hell’s Kitchen on Broadway? Anita Baker’s Songstress tour? It’s too bad if you didn’t, but it’s not as if you’re completely out of luck. Literal queens of R&B Gladys Knight, Stephanie Mills, Patti LaBelle, and Chaka Khan are singing their hearts out on a nearly nightly basis together, and Charlie Wilson, accompanied by Babyface, K-Ci Hailey, and El DeBarge, is set to do the same later in 2025. It’s an incredible time to be a fan of R&B, and you can get familiar with some of the genre’s indisputable icons right now during Black Music Month.

Stevie. Michael. Diana. Aretha. The all-time kings and queens of R&B need only a first name to garner the recognition their life’s work has earned them. In many instances, theirs are the records the elders danced to at weddings and barbecues, or spun while doing yard work and when they needed to motivate the family to band together for a household deep clean. If you’re lucky, someone cared enough about you to sit you down and explain what this music meant to them and their friends in hopes that you could develop an attachment to it, or at least recognize what it meant to Black America in its moment. One way or another, you’d come to understand that these emotions, conveyed through deeply soulful melody, are what spurred joy, mourning, and resilience—sometimes all at once—and are what would set the table for generations of R&B singers to come. Join us this Black Music Month in celebrating some of our favorite R&B singers and foundational heroes of music history.