Rhythm & Blues

Rhythm and blues gave American music its backbone. Without those post-war recordings from the 1940s and 50s, there's no rock and roll, no soul, no Motown, no funk, no Hip-Hop. Artists like Louis Jordan, Ruth Brown, and Ray Charles created a template where blues feeling met danceable rhythm and vocal performance became an athletic event. The name itself was a marketing category invented by Billboard, but the music was Black innovation responding to migration, urbanization, and the hunger for sounds that moved bodies and expressed truths gospel couldn't quite reach.

Decades rolled through, and R&B kept transforming. Sam Cooke brought church elegance to secular themes. Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett injected Southern grit. The Philadelphia sound added orchestration. Quiet storm emerged for late-night radio. New Jack Swing fused Hip-Hop's edge with vocal harmony. Neo-soul looked backward to move forward. Now the genre absorbs trap, Afrobeats, and electronic music without losing its core identity.

R&B samples span this entire timeline, from scratchy 78rpm recordings to pristine digital masters. Our catalog holds everything from doo-wop groups harmonizing on street corners to 2000s R&B sound samples that shaped modern production aesthetics. The breadth means you can pull a 1950s saxophone solo, a 1970s drum break, or a 1990s vocal run, depending on what your track needs.

Browse by decade, mood, or specific subgenre. Many recordings include stems for deeper control over individual instruments. Rhythm and blues isn't one sound. It's generations of Black artists constantly reinventing how emotion, rhythm, and melody can combine. These recordings let you tap into that continuum and add your own chapter to the story.