Contemporary R&B - Wikipedia

  The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified singers Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston as the two best-selling R&B artists of the 20th century.[8]

Whitney Houston's The Bodyguard: Original Soundtrack Album (1992) eventually sold over 45 million copies worldwide becoming the best-selling soundtrack of all time.[9] Janet Jackson's self-titled fifth studio album Janet (1993), which came after her multimillion-dollar contract with Virgin Records, sold over 14 million copies worldwide.[10] Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey recorded several Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hits, including "One Sweet Day", a collaboration between both acts, which became the longest-running No. 1 hit in Hot 100 history. Carey also released a remix of her 1995 single "Fantasy", with Ol' Dirty Bastard as a feature, a collaboration format that was unheard of at this point. Carey, Boyz II Men and TLC released albums in 1994 and 1995—Daydream, II, & CrazySexyCool.

In the late 1990s, neo soul, which added 1970s soul influences to the hip-hop soul blend, arose, led by artists such as Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill and Maxwell. Hill and Missy Elliott further blurred the line between R&B and hip hop by recording both styles. Beginning in 1995, the Grammy Awards enacted the Grammy Award for Best R&B Album, with II by Boyz II Men becoming the first recipient. The award was later received by TLC for CrazySexyCool in 1996, Tony Rich for Words in 1997, Erykah Badu for Baduizm in 1998 and Lauryn Hill for The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1999. In 1994 the singer Aaliyah dropped her debut album and in 1996 she released her second album called "One In A Million" with different sounds and produced by Missy Elliot and Timbaland, unknown at that moment. At the end of 1999, Billboard magazine ranked Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson as the first and second most successful artists of the 1990s.[11]

Simultaneously, in the second half of the 1990s, The Neptunes and Timbaland set influential precedence on contemporary R&B and hip hop music.[12]