A simple tweet from Young M.A about R&B kicked up some dust. "Music don’t feel the same because we barely have R&B," the rapper tweeted last month. "R&B brung that balance to music.. now everything is leanin one way smh so it gets played out quick! We need R&B for the balance no kap!" As the tweet went viral, this generation's R&B artists came forward to defend the genre and claimed that if someone thinks R&B is lacking, then they just aren't searching hard enough.
Young M.A talked about her recent controversy during a visit to State of the Culture and revealed that people took what she was saying the wrong way. "It was just a spontaneous tweet," she said. "I didn't even know how crazy it was gon' get. It was just something I was feeling at the moment 'cause I am a very huge fan of R&B. Most of my playlist is R&B and I was just listening to music in the house and this idea just sprung in my head so I went to Twitter to kinda express that."
The rapper explained that when she checks out playlists, R&B doesn't seem to have a stronghold in today's music culture the way it has in the past. Young M.A also clarified that she never said "R&B is dead" but adds "we don't hear it as often on front street as we would years prior." She added that she knows nowadays you have to "search for it" but that fact proves her point.
"I do search for R&B and that's the problem, why I gotta go search for it?" the rapper asked. "Why ain't it in our faces as much as it used to be?" Young M.A listens to both old and new R&B and recognizes that the vibe is different, but she questions what's keeping the genre from taking over the airwaves like it did decades ago. Watch the full episode of State of the Culture below.