But one of my issues with R&B of the last 10 - 15 years is that it's largely become the music of people who are left of center. Alot of the bands on that list I'm familiar with are 'Playery.

That might sound like an odd criticism to make on OKP itself, but I think R&B has become too imbalanced. Prior to maybe 15 years ago, R&B was the music of Black people of all types and classes. The biggest R&B names of the 70s, 80s and 90s were largely, though not completely, composed of "regular" people who made music for other regular people. Off the top of my head the only newish/youngish "regular person" I can think of is Summer Walker and maybe Ari Lennox. There used to be too many to count.

When regular, ordinary black people exited R&B the music lost alot. It lost the church influence (very little of the most mainstream R&B today has an ounce of church). It lost alot of that danceability we're talking about. It lost the pulse of the youth.

But that goes to another point I'be noticed - young, everyday black men seem to have almost no interest in the genre at all. They seem 100% all in on Hip-Hop, and that's a huge part of the problem too. You can't have any genre of music be healthy if young, talented regular men don't want anything to do with it. When most of us here were coming up most of the big name R&B men were regular guys: Babyface, all the NJS guys, Jodeci, Boyz-II-Men, R. Kelly (ignore everything else with him), Levert, etc. All those kinds of guys now who are young pour themselves into Hip-Hop now.