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In February, we launched Spotify CLASSICS, our first-ever program to celebrate catalog music. Our inaugural list focused on the Classic Hip-Hop and R&B Albums of the Streaming Era and featured timeless bodies of work like Beyoncé's Lemonade, Frank Ocean's Blonde, SZA's Ctrl, Rihanna's ANTI, and Jazmine Sullivan's Heaux Tales, to name a few.

Today we're unveiling the second chapter of our CLASSICS program: The 100 Greatest R&B Songs of the Streaming Era. Spotify defines the Streaming Era as a timeframe that spans 2015 until present day.

R&B went through an identity crisis during the first half of the 2010s, but the genre found its footing during the streaming era. R&B morphed into a style of music that absorbed hip-hop, pop, Afrobeats, electronic, alternative, and indie into its sound, breathing new life into the genre.

Spotify's U.S. editorial team—along with Carl Chery, Creative Director, Head of Urban Music at Spotify—has taken on the ambitious task of corralling all shades of R&B under one umbrella, and in the end, this list offers a snapshot of all the genre has offered in the streaming era.. Based on criteria such as quality, impact, replay value, influence, and cultural significance, Spotify CLASSICS is 100% qualitative. The program is driven by our editors' music and cultural expertise—and not by data—meaning that massive streaming numbers were not a requirement for the 100 songs you see below.

Note: All songs were released on Spotify after January 1, 2015. The Spotify streams are current as of April 8, 2024.

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