I will concede that the 90s - early 20s R&B is dead.

The ladies still make solid vulnerable music - Jazz, H.E.R., SZA, Summer Walker, Snoh Alegra, and Beyonce. Summer Walker is a star (IMO) but she has/is embraced the toxic relationships angle. If you have listened to Summer's CLEAR EP and some of her acoustic stuff, you can see the whiff of what could have been a classic R&B legend.

The top male R&B singers have either embraced the Drake passive aggressiveness or lean heavily into the get money/f-b!tches tropes (Brent Faiyaz, GIVEON, WEEKND, PND, Chris Brown's recent output). Someone mentioned him/it before but every since Bryson made "Trap Soul" people have been trying to conjure up something similar.

You still have the New Orleans based R&B folk like PJ Morton, Lucky Daye and Ambre who have put out fantastic material that are not picked up by the mainstream.