With his record breaking album Thriller Michael Jackson became the biggest superstar on the planet and proved that African American music was becoming well and truly mainstream.

The 1980s was the decade when R&B took over the charts pushing Rock to one side to be the backbone of popular music. Many of the Motown stars of the 1970s were now household names.

But in America much of the black community still felt excluded from mainstream society and the harder style of funk music was about to be pushed to it's limit aided by a disenfranchised youth and the arrival of ever more technology into the music scene. 

In the early 1980s a new kind of culture was emerging on the streets of the big cities and was accompanied by a new musical style called Rap. Later towards the end of the decade another music scene appeared in the clubs of Chicago called House Music which was to spawn a the whole new genre of Techno. Both of these styles heavily influenced what the artists who were enjoying success in the mainstream and resulted in taking R&B to a new level.

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History of Hip Hop 1
History of Hip Hop 2
History of Hip Hop 3

History of Techno 1
History of Techno 2
History of Techno 3

R&B since the 90s 1
R&B since the 90s 2
R&B since the 90s 3