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Rhythm and blues (R&B) is the name given to a wide-ranging genre of popular music first created by African Americans in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The term was originally used by record companies to refer to recordings bought predominantly by African Americans, at a time when "urban, rocking, jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular. The term has then had a number of shifts in meaning. Starting in the 1960s, after this style of music contributed to the development of rock and roll, the term R&B became used - predominantly by Caucasian groups — to refer to music styles that developed from and incorporated electric blues, as well as gospel and soul music. By the 1970s, the term rhythm and blues was being used as a blanket term to describe soul and funk. Since the 1990s, the term Contemporary R&B is now mainly used to refer to a modern version of soul and funk-influenced pop music.

Luther Vandross born April 20, 1951 was an American R&B singer, songwriter, and record producer. He was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, where he began playing the piano at the age of three. During his career, Vandross sold over twenty-five million albums and won eight Grammy Awards. Luther Vandross came on the music scene in 1975, singing back-up for David Bowie. He released his own album, "Never Too Much," in 1981, and it instantly went to the top of the R&B charts. Each of his next five albums sold more than a million copies, and Vandross won his first Grammy Award in 1990, for best R&B male vocal performance. He went on to record many more hit albums, and won several more Grammys. In April, 2003, Vandross suffered a stroke that left him in a coma for almost two months. In June, he came out of the coma. Never having fully recovered from the stroke, and suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure, Vandross died in July 2005.

Whitney Houston born August 9, 1963 was one of the biggest female pop music stars of the 1980s and 1990s, thanks to hit singles like "Saving All My Love For You" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." In 1985 she released her first album, Whitney Houston, a Grammy-winner and, her second album, 1987's Whitney, debuted at #1 on the charts. By the end of the '80s she had a many number one hits and was one of MTV's biggest stars. Throughout the 1990s Houston continued to sell millions of records. Houston also tried acting, and landed lead roles in The Bodyguard (1992) and The Preacher's Wife (1996). Beyond those, she stared in a few more films. She married singer Bobby Brown in 1992; their stormy relationship seemed to lead to a decline in her career in the early 2000s, and in September of 2006 Houston filed for divorce. Houston's recent record releases have sold modestly, but her production company has had box office success with the films The Princess Diaries (2001) and the Disney TV movie The Cheetah Girls (2003). Houston was the subject of a widespread September 2001 rumor that she had died in result of a drug overdose. Even though rumors like this are mentioned, Whitney Houston will always be one of biggest female stars ever.

There are many R&B artist that have developed some of the most beautiful music.

Aaliyah	Alicia Keys	Beyonce		H-Town
Brian Mcknight			Keyshia Cole
Lyfe Jennings	Mary J. Blige	Chris Brown		Tank