 | | The Gnarls Barkley collaboration didn't bring producer Danger Mouse to the top of the British charts for the first time, but it did mark his debut as the pilot of a hit record. |
 | | As a solo project with a revolving door of members, the heart and face of Santigold is vivacious frontwoman Santi White. |
 | | Able to rap, sing, and write songs that had everyone from John Legend to Roots Manuva singing her praises, Estelle Swaray got her start in London's renowned hip-hop record store Deal Real. |
 | | She grew up listening to '70s soul and '80s hip-hop, but Erykah Badu drew more comparisons to Billie Holiday upon her breakout in 1997, after the release of her first album, Baduizm. |
 | | Much can be said about the late Amy Winehouse, one of the U.K.'s flagship vocalists during the 2000s. |
 | | The acronym N.E.R.D. stands for "No One Ever Really Dies," but childhood friends Chad Hugo, Pharrell Williams, and Shay most certainly used the group to proudly emphasize the nerdier aspects of their musical personalities. |
 | | Neo-soul songstress Corinne Bailey Rae was born in Leeds, England, in 1979 to a British mother and West Indian father. |
 | | Solange Knowles, the younger sister of Beyoncé Knowles, studied dance and theater as a child and made her singing debut at age five at an amusement park. |
 | | Call Lauryn Hill the mother of hip-hop invention; with her 1998 solo debut The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the Fugees' most vocal member not only established herself as creative force on her own, but also broke new ground by successfully integrating rap, soul, reggae, and R&B into her own sound. |
 | | A mature R&B vocalist who excelled most with slower, sensual material ("Slowly, Surely," "I'm Not Afraid," "My Love") and was versatile enough to pack plenty of punch with anthems of pride and self-empowerment ("Golden," "Family Reunion," "Hate on Me"), Jill Scott grew up in north Philadelphia and began her performing career reading her own poetry. |
 | | If you read a lot about new music on the Web, odds are pretty good that, at some point between the September 2004 release of "Galang" and the March 2005 release of Arular, you were struck with the urge to turn your computer off or maybe even heave it out of a nearby window. |
 | | Beginning as a ragged but energetic garage-influenced indie rock group with the ferocity of punk but with a soulful, bluesy edge and later delving into disco and unadulterated pop, the Noisettes were founded by guitarist Dan Smith and singer/bassist Shingai Shoniwa, who previously worked together in the band Sonarfly. |
 | | Neo-soul singer and pianist John Legend combined the raw fervor of contemporaries Cody ChesnuTT and the burning precision of D'Angelo. |
 | | In a very short span of time, R&B singer/songwriter Chrisette Michele shot from small-time performer up to one of Def Jam's most promising talents, purely based on her unique instrument -- a gorgeous and effortlessly versatile singing voice colored with Billie Holiday-esque inflections of vocal pop and jazz. |
 | | Vanessa Brown, alternately known as V.V. Brown, is an English songwriter and performer who stepped out in 2005 with a co-writing credit on the Pussycat Dolls' PCD ("I Don't Need a Man," a collaboration with Rich Harrison, Kara DioGuardi, and Nicole Scherzinger) and her debut single, a bouncy, contemporary pop/R&B hybrid titled "Whipped," which appeared on the soundtrack for the television series Las Vegas. |
 | | When the U.K. press began dubbing Adele "the next Amy Winehouse" in late 2007, the hype didn't touch upon the heavy singer/songwriter influence found in the Londoner's music. |
 | | Though popular success has largely eluded the Roots, the Philadelphia group showed the way for live rap, building on Stetsasonic's "hip-hop band" philosophy of the mid-'80s by focusing on live instrumentation at their concerts and in the studio. |
 | | Throwback R&B singer Raphael Saadiq was born in Oakland, CA, in 1966, and started playing music six years later. |
 | | One of a handful of neo-classic soul artists to emerge following the late-'90s success of artists like D'Angelo and Lauryn Hill, Atlanta's India. |
 | | Hailed as a prodigy on the acoustic double bass within months of first touching the instrument as a 15-year-old, Esperanza Spalding has emerged as a fine jazz bassist, but has also distinguished herself playing blues, funk, hip-hop, pop fusion, and Brazilian and Afro-Cuban styles as well. |
 | | Discovered in the wake of the Strokes' popularity and the subsequent garage rock revival, New York's art punk trio the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are comprised of singer Karen O, guitarist Nicolas Zinner, and drummer Brian Chase. |
 | | Named after a Chinese friend whose name sounds like the Mandarin pronunciation of "bandstand," the Ting Tings -- a scrappy, dance-oriented duo consisting of singer/guitarist Katie White and drummer Jules De Martino -- formed in the Salford district of Manchester, England in 2006. |
 | | Marsha Ambrosius and Natalie Stewart are the funky divas behind the neo-soul duo Floetry. Ambrosius and Stewart emerged in the mid-'90s as songwriters in demand. |
 | | Harlem-bred vocalist Kelis left her parents' home at 16 and landed a deal with Virgin four years later. |
 | | |
 | | Contemporary R&B star Jazmine Sullivan spent several years learning the ropes of the recording industry before signing to J Records and making her solo recording debut in 2008 with the number one R&B single "Need U Bad. |
 | | OutKast's blend of gritty Southern soul, fluid raps, and the low-slung funk of their Organized Noize production crew epitomized the Atlanta wing of hip-hop's rising force, the Dirty South, during the mid to late '90s. |
 | | Multi-talented and flamboyant, Cee-Lo initially made a name for himself and his trademark crooning as part of pioneering Dirty South rappers Goodie Mob before he broke away in the early 2000s for a colorful solo route. |
 | | With her omnivorous musical tastes and cheeky attitude, London-based pop singer/songwriter Lily Allen made a name for herself almost as soon as she released her demos on the Internet. |
 | | R&B singer-songwriter Amel Larrieux grew up in New York's Greenwich Village; her mother, Brenda Dixon Gottschild, was a dance critic and professor, and she was raised in an artistic environment. |
 | | Ledisi Young (her given name meaning "to bring forth" in Nigerian) was born in the Big Easy, where she sang with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra when she was eight years old and spent many adolescent hours watching her mother perform with a local R&B band, often in a nearby park. |
 | | By mixing R&B with a sultry dose of neo-soul, Alicia Keys became an international star in 2001 with the release of her debut album. |
 | | Born Goapele Mohlabane in Oakland, CA, this singer grew up in a socially conscious and politically active family. |
 | | With a diverse array of influences, eclectic twosome J*Davey -- female vocalist Jack Davey (b. Brianna Cartwright) and producer Brook D'Leau -- deliberately evade the narrow categories of what urban music should sound like, not to mention that they defy normal conventions of pop music. |
 | | Initially regarded as one of the most promising rappers to emerge in the late '90s, Mos Def turned to acting in subsequent years as music became a secondary concern for him. |
 | | If there was one R&B artist for whom the neo-soul categorization seemed limiting, it was Philadelphia native Bilal. |
 | | Meaning "red-haired one" in French, La Roux is the synth pop project of flame-haired singer/songwriter Elly Jackson and keyboardist/producer Ben Langmaid. |
 | | Common (originally Common Sense) was a highly influential figure in rap's underground during the '90s, keeping the sophisticated lyrical technique and flowing syncopations of jazz-rap alive in an era when commercial gangsta rap was threatening to obliterate everything in its path. |
 | | Emerging during the same boom of retro U.K.-based singers that launched Amy Winehouse, Duffy distinguished herself with a melodic, vintage voice that brought to mind such '60s artists as Dusty Springfield and Petula Clark. |
 | | Philadelphia-born Taalib Johnson, aka R&B artist Musiq (Soulchild), grew up the oldest of nine children. |
 | | Conceived as the first "virtual hip-hop group," Gorillaz blended the musical talents of Dan "The Automator" Nakamura, Blur's Damon Albarn, Cibo Matto's Miho Hatori, and Tom Tom Club's Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz with the arresting visuals of Jamie Hewlett, best known as the creator of the cult comic Tank Girl. |
 | | Like almost all other musicians hit with the neo-soul tag, the primary inspirations of Leela James -- a gritty-voiced singer and songwriter born in Los Angeles, California -- dated no later than the late '70s; Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, and Tina Turner were regularly cited. |
 | | Chicago-based MC Lupe Fiasco (born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco) began rapping in junior high school and joined a group called da Pak several years later. |
 | | Finding an unlikely middle point between Suicide's hostile, proto-electro punk art noise and the sardonic, pop-friendly sound of the Flaming Lips, MGMT started as electroclash musical terrorists but quickly grew into an eclectic, brainy pop group with psychedelic overtones. |
 | | Singer/songwriter Robin Thicke was one of the few to define the new millennium's blue-eyed soul movement. |
 | | The French group Phoenix draw elements from their eclectic '80s upbringing to arrive at a satisfying blend of rock and synthesizers. |
 | | British singer Joss Stone was only 16 years old when she hit the mainstream in 2003, armed with a powerful voice and a vintage, soul-based sound. |
 | | Adult contemporary R&B singer/songwriter/producer Dwele grew up on Detroit's west side, listening to soul music from Motown visionaries Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye as well as jazz on the radio. |
 | | Girl Talk is the pseudonym of DJ and remixer Greg Gillis. A Pittsburgh native who works as a biomedical research engineer during the day, Gillis channels his other creative energies into Girl Talk, whose sample-based dance tracks have made him the John Oswald or Christian Marclay of the mash-up generation: each of his songs are built on recognizable samples of recent hit singles, recontextualized into an entirely new piece. |
 | | One of the truisms of pop music is that in a style's early years, novelty songs are commonplace: the freshness and novelty of the musical form lends itself to giggly comic songs, and in turn new audiences attracted by the humor get exposed to the new kind of music. |
![Metropolis: The Chase Suite [Special Edition] Album Cover](http://images.slacker.com/isv1/album/v1/1331299/aol/1/center/5,0/70.jpg "Metropolis: The Chase Suite [Special Edition] Album Cover")
![Tightrope [feat. Big Boi] Album Cover](http://images.slacker.com/isv1/album/v1/1592136/aol/1/center/5,0/70.jpg "Tightrope [feat. Big Boi] Album Cover")
