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Top 10 Best Female R&B Artists


    Top 10 Best Female R&B Artists of 2019

    R&B is gaining popularity once again and on this list you will find the top 10 best female R&B artists of 2019.  R&B isn’t dead. It’s being reborn. This list provides features from young, up-and-coming female R&B acts. All of them having gained mainstream attention for their smooth and chill music.

    1. Ella Mai

    Ella Mai is a British singer and songwriter from London, England. She signed to DJ Mustard’s label 10 Summers Records in 2014. Her EP’s include TimeChange, and Ready. Her debut studio album, Ella Mai, was released in October 2018 and featured the single “Boo’d Up,” which was released on February 20, 2018.

    “Boo’d Up” started to create some buzz and on 26 April 2018, Ella Mai then released a music video. The single eventually became her first top ten song in the US giving Ella Mai her big break. n the following month,  Rolling Stone wrote that the single is “one of the biggest singles by a breakout female R&B singer in the past 10 years.”

    The single peaked at number five on the US Billboard Hot 100, and broke the record for the most weeks at No. 1 of any song by a woman on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart.

    Ella Mai – Boo’d Up (Music Video)

    2. Teyana Taylor

    Teyana Taylor igned to Kanye West’s GOOD Music and gained recognition when she  featured on Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. She did the choreography for Beyoncé’s hit single, “Ring the Alarm.

    In February 2008, Taylor released her debut single, called “Google Me“. The song reached at number 90 on the US Billboard‘s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. In 2014 she released her debut VII studio album which debuted at number 19 on the Billboard 200.

    In 2018 Teyana Taylor released her album K.T.S.E.(Keep That Same Energy).  It was recorded as part of Kanye West’s Wyoming Sessions. This was part of Kanye West’s five album weekly release.

    Claire Lobenfeld of Pitchfork believed that K.T.S.E.  is “long overdue, but the album remains too small a platform for her tremendous vocal talent”, complimenting Teyana Taylor’s performance whose “singing sounds luxurious but effortless” and “sticky and seductive.”

    Teyana Taylor – Gonna Love Me (Remix) ft. Ghostface Killah, Method Man, Raekwon (Music Video)

    3. H.E.R.

    H.E.R. (Having Everything Revealed), is a  singer-songwriter from Vallejo, California.  She has released five EP’s which include H.E.R. 1(2016), H.E.R. 2 (2017), H.E.R. 2, The B Sides (2017), I Used To Know Her: The Prelude(2018) and I Used To Know Her: Part 2 (2018).

    Her first EP H.E.R. Vol. 1, made iTunes’ Best of 2016 R&B/Soul Albums list, with the track “Losing” making the iTunes Best R&B/Soul Singles list. NPR listed H.E.R. Vol. 1 as the first selection in its “5 Essential R&B Albums You Slept On” roundup. Calling the music “Slow-burning R&B that zooms in on emotional highs and lows.”

    Rolling Stone included H.E.R. in its March 2017 “10 Artists You Need To Know” roundup. And Forbes named her one of “5 Alternative R&B Artists To Look Out For In 2017” stating that “In the same vein as The Weeknd’s enigmatic introduction to the world, H.E.R.’s image remains a mystery. The irony, though, is that her moniker is an acronym for Having Everything Revealed.”

    She was nominated in five categories for the 2019 Grammy Awards.  They included  Album of the Year, Best New Artist, Best R&B Performance, Best R&B Song, and Best R&B Album.

    H.E.R. – Focus (Official Music Video)

    4. SZA

    SZA (Solána Imani Rowe) self-released her debut EP, See.SZA.Run in October 2012, which she then followed up with her second EP, titled S, in April 2013. She then released Z, her third EP  in April 2014.

    In January 2018, SZA featured with Kendrick Lamar on the track “All the Stars”, which was released as the lead single to the soundtrack album of the film Black Panther.

    The single peaked at number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, and this made SZA’s second top 10 hit on the chart, after Maroon 5, “What Lovers Do” which peaked at number 9 on the chart. SZA collaborated with Cardi B on the track “I Do” for the album Invasion of Privacy.

    Jordan Sargent of Pitchfork magazine labelled SZA’s vocals as being “chillwave” and “ethereal”.

    SZA – Broken Clocks (Official Music Video)

    5. Jorja Smith

    Jorja Smith is an English singer-songwriter from Walsall, West Midland. She has collaborated with artists including Drake, Kali Uchis, and Stormzy.

    In January 2016, Smith released her debut single “Blue Lights”, which samples Dizzee Rascal’s song “Sirens”, on SoundCloud; the song garnered 400,000 plays on the website within a month.

    And she performed as a special guest on Drake’s Boy Meets World Tour in February and March 2017. She also featured on two tracks on his mixtape More Life (2017).

    In 2018, she won the Brit Critics’ Choice Award. Her debut studio album, Lost & Found, was released in June 2018 and peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart.

    Jorja Smith – Blue Lights | A COLORS SHOW

    6. Jessie Reyez

    Jessie Reyezis a Canadian singer and songwriter. Her 2016 single “Figures” peaked at number 58 on the Canadian Hot 100 in 2017 and was certified 2× Platinum by Music Canada. In 2016, she also released the single “Shutter Island.

    She received two 2017 iHeartRadio Much Music Video Awards nominations for Best New Canadian Artist and Fan Fave Video for “Shutter Island”.

    Jessie Reyez performed “Figures” at the 2017 BET Awards on June 25, 2017 and on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on August 8, 2017. “Figures” has also received over 20 million streams on Spotify.

    She won the Juno Award for Breakthrough Artist of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2018. Later the same year, she received a SOCAN Songwriting Prize nomination for the song “Cotton Candy.”

    In August 2018, she collaborated with Eminem on “Nice Guy” and “Good Guy“, from the album Kamikaze. She also received two 2018 MTV Video Music Award nominations for Push Artist of the Year and Video With a Message for the song “Gatekeeper.”

    Jessie Reyez – Figures (Official Music Video)

    7. Kehlani

    Kehlani achieved initial fame as a member of the teen group Poplyfe. In 2014, she released her first commercial mixtape Cloud 19. The mixtape was listed as one of the Complexs “50 Best Albums of 2014.” A song she released in late 2014, “Till the Morning” was placed by Billboard as one of the “Emerging Picks of the Week” on November 7, 2014.

    In 2015, Kehlani released her second commercial mixtape, You Should Be Here. The mixtape debuted at number 5 on the national R&B/Hip-Hop chart. Billboard called it the “year’s first great R&B album”, when it debuted at number 5 on the US Billboard‘s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.

    Complex called her one of the “15 Artists to Watch Out for in 2015” and Rolling Stone named her one of the “10 New Artists You Need to Know.” She was also nominated for a 2016 Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album.

    Her song “Gangsta” was featured on the soundtrack for the hit movie Suicide Squad, and reached number 41 on the Hot 100.

    In 2016, she was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album for You Should Be Here. Kehlani released her first major-label debut album, SweetSexySavage on January 27, 2017. She was also featured on the Cardi B album track “Ring”, which entered at number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100, making her first top 40 entry on the chart.

    Kehlani – Honey (Official Music Video)

    8. Queen Naija

    Queen Naija, is a singer-songwriter who in December 2017, released the song “Medicine”. Although she was a social media figure who wasn’t signed to any label, her song debuted at number forty-five on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week of April 10, 2018.

    In June 2018, she released her second single, “Karma”, this time as a signed artist to Capitol Records. On its release day, the song reached #1 overall on the iTunes charts.

    Queen Naija first became popular as a contestant on the eighth season of American Idol. At age 17, Queen Naija, then known as Queen Bulls, returned to audition for a second time, after her audition two years previously did not advance her into the next round. In the eighth season, she succeeded in her audition and advanced into the Hollywood round, but was cut when the top 30 were chosen.

    Queen Naija began 2018 by releasing the song “Medicine.” In January 2018, she did an official lyrics & meaning interview with Genius. A month after the song’s release, it continued to spark buzz capturing the attention of record labels across the country.

    Queen Naija on April 25, 2018, signed to Capitol Records. On June 28, 2018, she released her second single, “Karma”. On it’s release day, the song reached #1 overall on the iTunes charts. “Karma” closed the week as the thirteenth-best seller in the United States, thus taking #13 on the Billboard Digital Songs sales chart. In July 2018, “Karma” debuted at #63 on the Billboard Hot 100.

    Queen Naija released her self-titled EP on July 27, 2018. It consists of five songs: “Medicine”, “Karma”, “Mama’s Hand”, “Butterflies”, and “Bad Boy”. In August 2018, the EP debuted at #26 on the Billboard 200 and reached #1 on the Apple Music R&B charts.

    Queen Naija – Medicine (Official Music Video)

    9. Kali Uchis

    Kali Uchis, is a Colombian-American singer and songwriter. She debuted in the music industry with her 2012 mixtape, Drunken Babble, which was described as “genre-defying”. She released her first EP, Por Vida, in 2015.

    In October 2017, Kali Uchis was nominated for a Latin Grammy Award for Record of the Year for “El Ratico”, her collaboration with Colombian musician Juanes.

    She was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards for “Get You”, her collaboration with Canadian singer Daniel Caesar.

    On March 14, 2018, Uchis performed on The Tonight Show and announced her debut album, Isolation. Her debut studio album was released in 2018 receiving positive reviews from critics.

    Kali Uchis – Just A Stranger ft Steve Lacy (Official Music Video)

    10. Sabrina Claudio

    Sabrina Claudio is a Cuban-American singer-songwriter. Her single “Unravel Me” peaked at number 22 on the Billboard Twitter Emerging Artists chart, and her single “Belong to You” peaked at number 2 on the same.

    Her debut mixtape, About Time was released on October 5, 2017. It peaked at number 13 on Billboard‘s Top R&B Albums chart.

    On April 2, 2018, Claudio released the single “All to You” followed by “Don’t Let Me Down” featuring Khalid on April 4, from her upcoming debut studio album.

    Sabrina Claudio – Belong To You (Official Music Video)

     

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