Welcome to the New York Times Popcast, your Blaseh, have music description.

I'm your host Ben Ratliff.

Hey, I'm back and I'm better.

I want you bad as ever.

Don't let me just let up.

I want to give you better.

Maybe it's whatever. I want to give you better

Maybe it's whatever

Somebody got a step up Don't let somebody's on next up be damn if let them catch up. It's easy to see that you're fitter That was don't by Bryson Tiller from his new album Trapp Soul, his first album Trapp Soul.

John Caramonica is here with me.

True. To help explain the sudden appearance of Bryson pillar

Getting that sh money an R&B singer yes or I think right I think you see that's the thing is he we're gonna discuss

brice and tiller in the context of what R&B is and has become an eight and

eight it's sometimes we need to discuss it as the absence of

something rather than as a presence right you go to essence fast right have done

you've been essence fast right so if you were a person... R&B Central. Yeah, so by one metric,

R&B is alive and well, right? I'm sure you've never left Essence Fest and felt,

Wow, R&B's really in the tank. Oh, no, no.

But you know, often who you're seeing at Essence Fest

are people who are not in the top 10.

Not in the top 40.

You are aware that you're seeing tradition and the extension of a tradition right

...