Diddy sparked a lot of debate last week, after he declared that R&B is “dead” during an Instagram Live with Timbaland. On Saturday, the mogul took to Twitter to clarify what he meant.
“It’s been 3 days of debate… This is the clarity of the message… It’s not disrespect to anybody,” he tweeted.
“This conversation was out of love and me purposely wanting to bring attention to R&B! It was something that I saw the effect of the Hip hop and R&B balance,” Diddy added.
“That balance is honesty and realness when it comes together, melodies, vulnerability and most importantly LOVE!!” Diddy concluded.”
Diddy’s tweets come after an IG Live session with Timbaland, where he proclaimed that the beloved music genre is dead. “R&B is muthafuckin’ dead as of right now,” he said last week. “The R&B I made my babies to? R&B gotta be judged to a certain thing—it’s the feeling though, doggy. No, no, no. It’s a feeling. You gotta be able to sing for R&B and then you gotta tell the truth. R&B is not a hustle. This shit is about feeling your vulnerability.”
Diddy continued, “You gotta muthafuckin make a n***a dick hard or a woman’s vagina wet. You gotta cry. You gotta be able to get your girl back. I don’t wanna hear all this bullshit […] It’s our fault for accepting anything less for anybody getting on a mic. I feel like there was a death of R&B singing, and I’m a part of bringing that shit back! I ain’t feelin’ no emotions.”
After Diddy made his initial comments, Brent Faiyaz was quick to point out that people care less about the idea of genre labels for music these days. “Don’t nobody care about music genres anymore, dat shit primitive,” he wrote. “Sauce dat shit up & let it fly.” Chris Brown, meanwhile, told Diddy to “respectfully shut up” in a post on his Instagram Story.
Mary J. Blige directly engaged with Diddy on an Instagram Live stream, in which she suggested the genre gets called “popular music” when white musicians like Adele and Justin Bieber “get a hold of it.”
Diddy’s clarification on the matter comes not long after he agreed to a “hit for hit” battle with Jermaine Dupri in Atlanta. The two announced the event, and made it clear that it won’t be a Verzuz battle on account of Swizz Beatz and Timbaland’s lawsuit against Triller, the company that acquired the series in 2021.
