Drake and Justin Bieber are among the biggest popular music stars in the world.

Part of their appeal has been blurring pop, hip-hop and R&B — music genres the music business has traditionally segregated along racialized lines.

My doctoral research has examined how Drake, Bieber and Jessie Reyez each innovatively approach R&B music — and build distinctly Canadian lifestyle brands that reinforce, complicate and/or challenge dominant beliefs about Canadian identities as exclusively white and R&B as a genre style exclusively practised by Black American artists.

‘Race records’

Associations between an artist’s skin colour and the classification of their music have long existed. Billboard music charts created the music genre chart “race records” in 1947 to exclusively group Black identities. This chart, in part, gave some visibility to Black artists who were largely marginalized in society. However, the category “race records” overgeneralized the diverse styles of music created by Black artists.

“Race record” artists were understood as “Black” and “old-time” artists were understood as “white southerners.” Billboard later renamed the “race record” chart “R&B,” then “Black singles” and then again back to “R&B.” In 1949, RCA Victor, a major record company in the United States, also used the term “blues and rhythm” for a cerise-coloured record featuring primarily Black artists.

Justin Bieber, left, and Giveon accept the award for best pop song for ‘Peaches’ at the MTV Video Music Awards, in September 2021, in New York. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Racialized categories continue today

Dominant archetypes of Black rappers and white country singers continue to shape expectations around genre.

In 2011, Black American artist Frank Ocean said: “… in America, it’s the first thing that comes to mind. If you’re a singer and you’re Black, you’re an R&B artist. Period.”

Journalist Elias Leight noted in 2019 that Black artist Lil Nas X’s song “Old Town Road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus was removed from Billboard’s Hot Country Charts despite the clear country sounds in the song and music video. Instead, it was included in Billboard’s “Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs” chart.

Writer Teofilo Killip has noted:
“Country music” is “what some people classify as ‘white people music.’ But, like most stereotypes, that simply isn’t true … music really has no boundaries … [yet] there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance when you hear the words ‘Black country singer.’”
Canadian artist Shawn Desman, who is of Portuguese and Italian descent, has said people usually assumed he was Black because of his participation in R&B.