New wave of Neo-soul artists are innovating

CALL IT R&B, soul, "urban" - the music associated with supple rhythms and emotive, gospel-influenced vocals is a permanent fixture in the upper regions of the pop charts. Last year, R&B artists sold nearly 50 million albums and 250 million digital tracks, outdone only by rock and pop music. The sound is omnivorous and influential as it continues to infiltrate dance music and hip-hop, while superstars such as Rihanna and Justin Timberlake regularly incorporate it into their music. Even introspective indie rockers, such as Arcade Fire, have embraced its pulse.

R&B music lately has become synonymous on the mainstream charts with a certain rhythmic and vocal abandon - a platform for emoting and celebrating, a soundtrack for partying and hustling. But it also has a dark and twisted side, and a new wave of neo-soul artists has established its identity by exploring less conventional themes, making some of the most inventive records of the era in any genre.

In 2010, the Atlanta-based artist Janelle Monae created an android alter-ego in her song cycle "The ArchAndroid"; a few weeks ago, she released an even more ambitious follow-up, "The Electric Lady," as part of the multipart concept.

In 2012, Frank Ocean, a member of the Odd Future hip-hop collective, tuned into "Channel Orange" and the toxic lifestyle of his adopted home in California; mourning a breakup with another man in the song "Bad Religion," he worked the divide between secular and sacred that has informed soul albums since Ray Charles emerged in the 1950s.

Last year also saw the emergence of Miguel, an R&B singer who is opening for Drake in one of the fall's biggest arena tours, hitting the Wells Fargo Center Saturday. Miguel's hit 2012 release, "Kaleidoscope Dream," flirted with many styles of music. "I definitely think it's an R&B record, though other people may not," Miguel said at the time. "They are so conditioned to expect certain things out of current R&B. . . . But R&B was once live music, it was psychedelic, it was rock, it was funk, and all these genres stem from soul music. You never would have had Funkadelic or [Jimi] Hendrix or Hall and Oates or the Bee Gees or the Brothers Johnson had it not been for soul and R&B. There would be no hip-hop or rock without R&B. It was important for me to be true to what R&B is, and that is soulful."