Innovation keeps the world turning—especially in music, where experimentation is often key to attaining legendary status. Let’s be real: Listeners grow tired of hearing the same voices and sounds recycled ad nauseam. The best musicians know how to bend the rules of expectation, creating unforgettable music that not only stands the test of time but also changes entire worlds of sound.
Throughout the history of American music, Black artists, in particular, have excelled in this area, setting new creative standards for the rest of the industry.
Think about what Jimi Hendrix did to rock music with his wailing electric guitar. Ponder how Prince transfigured pop music and brought the sound of Minneapolis to the wider world. Black artists have always pushed the envelope, and that’s no different today, as innovators outside of hip-hop and R&B—the genres typically associated with Black artists—are taking music in exciting new directions. Here are five great examples.
Indie-pop singer-songwriter Aisha Badru grew up in Yonkers, New York, where she learned to play guitar in 10th grade and developed an appreciation for Tracy Chapman and The Beatles. After graduation, she turned down two music scholarships and went to college in the Bronx—but it wasn’t a good fit. So she dropped out and gave herself a year to work on music. In 2015, she released her debut EP, Vacancy, and Volkswagen selected her song “Waiting Around” for an ad campaign. That opportunity changed her life, and her debut album, Pendulum, followed in 2018.
Badru’s soothing, grainy vocals and poignant lyricism have made her music stretch across genre lines and appeal to fans of folk, soul, and even rock. On songs like 2023’s “Move,” Badru’s register is almost a whisper that lays over a bed of claps, but then on other tunes, like the aspirational 2021 song “Rooted,” Badru gets into a near-R&B bag to become the kind of singer you might hear on a major radio station. Her ability to contort the shape of her voice depending on her genreless songs’ backdrops have made her hard to categorize—and immensely addictive to listen to.
When it comes to lyricism, Badru’s favored topics are just as vast, ranging from emotional diary notes about her own life (“My mind was an unripened plum/Fertilized by violence, grown in the slum,” from “Forest Green”) to commanding pleas to be socially responsible in a world that humanity is slowly wrecking (“Our stage is the earth below us/But we destroy it till she can’t hold us,” from “Soil’s Daughter”). Badru’s music will fit your ears no matter the taste.
One listen to Vagabon’s complex music, and it’s clear why, in interviews, she describes herself as a “science and math person.” Born Laetitia Tamko in the African nation of Cameroon and raised from the age of 14 in New York, Vagabon learned to play guitar via YouTube tutorials, using an instrument purchased from Costco. She began uploading music to Bandcamp in 2014, the same year she graduated from the City College of New York’s Grove School of Engineering.
“Because I had no expectations, I knew nothing to be afraid of,” she told NYLON in 2017. “It’s something that’s so important to me. As I was doing it more and more and more, I was realizing that I wanted to keep getting better and better.”
In the decade since, the singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist has immersed herself in the intersection of genres, experimenting with the sounds of contemporary music to create project after project of unforgettable, uncategorizable tunes. At times meek and whispering, other times loud and boastful, Vagabon represents a new age of indie rock, though she’s so much more than any one genre.
Vagabon’s self-starting nature can be felt in her music; just listen to her 2017 debut album Infinite Worlds, a guitar-centric LP that positioned her as an idiosyncratic indie-rock prodigy. But just when you want to paint her into a stylistic corner, she spins the wheel. On her 2019 self-titled sophomore LP, she trades delicate guitar plucks for a digital atmosphere. She also swaps her whispering vocals for a bolder tone no longer enshrouded by the production of each song.
Have you spotted the pattern yet? Vagabon’s third-studio album, 2023’s Sorry I Haven’t Called, once again switches things up considerably. If her first album was defined by meekness and her second by being bold, the third is an exercise in vibrancy, thanks to rousing drums, fun Auto-Tune vocal effects, and rippling production that’ll blow you away if your feet aren’t firmly planted into the ground. There’s no doubt that her next album, whenever it comes, will go even further left field.
Shaboozey has been a fixture in the music industry since the release of the 2014 rap song “Jeff Gordon” (which bears a passing similarity to OG Maco’s breakout hit “U Guessed It”). Hailing from Woodbridge, Virginia, Shaboozey can rap his ass off, but he also has an appreciation for country music thanks to a Nigerian father that played him Kenny Rogers songs. Years later, that inspired him to try his hand at making songs that blend rap and country.
Now, Shaboozey has gone viral for songs like 2022’s “Snake” and “Tall Boy,” and “Beverly Hills,” both from 2021. On these and other tracks, he finds ways to incorporate both genres in ways that aren’t gimmicky, like Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” or Lil Tracy’s “like a farmer.”
With his booming voice and long and flowing dreads, Shaboozey has been called “the Future of country music,” a comparison that, if you think about the ways Future makes music, isn’t too far off. Shaboozey either sings full-on when he’s diving into the deep spectrum of human emotion, or he grabs the microphone and fits sharp 16s over booming bass and country guitars. With each song he releases, it’s clear that he’s revolutionizing what country music can sound like, bringing in swathes of potential fans to the genre.
His 2022 album Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die, which has more than 100 million streams, captures both sides of his sound. “Beverly Hills” leans more into hip-hop for a range of twisting flows that rely on bass to drive home their power, while “My Love” utilizes a crooning style more fit for waxing poetic about having your heart broken. The multifaceted nature of his music is continuously reflected across his growing catalog of songs.
Thanks to cosigns from artists like Timbaland, Diplo, and even Shaquille O'Neal, his unique mix of country and hip-hop will continue to captivate fans of both genres who want to experience something beyond what they’ve heard before.
Before Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE, many casual fans of popular music might’ve been surprised to learn that house music is a historically Black genre. Its roots lie in the Black and gay nightclubs of 1980s Chicago, and house is hardly the only form of dance music born in Black and brown communities. This history is extremely important to electronic artist Aluna, who’s spent years spreading knowledge and releasing vital music that draws on a wealth of influences and pushes dance music in thrilling new directions.
Born in Wales, Aluna Francis grew up in the United States and England before making London her home officially. She was a reflexologist before getting into music. In 2009, she linked up with producer George Reid to form the duo AlunaGeorge, which found success with songs like “Your Drums, Your Love,” which hit No. 50 on the U.K. Singles chart, and “White Noise,” a Disclosure collab that earned them their first Top 40 hit. But after a successful 11 years as a duo, AlunaGeorge announced that it was going on an indefinite hiatus. Aluna began releasing music as a solo entity shortly after.
Her debut solo album, Renaissance, arrived in 2020, well before Beyoncé’s LP of the same name, and it includes a mix of dance sounds representative of her heritage. “I’m a half-Jamaican, half-Indian Black woman living in England, but my mom was born in Tanzania,” she told Tidal in 2022. “I am hearing all the music from those different parts of me. It’s U.K. house, Afrobeat, and Jamaican dancehall.”
Aluna returned in 2023 with the ’90s-inspired MYCELiUM, featuring collaborations with the likes of MNEK, Jayda G, and Pabllo Vittar. The album is named for the scientific term given to interwoven fungal threads.
“Mycelium is nature’s superpower—if I was going to be a superhero, I would want the ability to harness that hidden underground cellular network that lives all around us deconstructing and reconstructing, but undetectable… invincible,” she told Consequence in 2023. “I think Black women are a lot like that—we are constantly torn down, exploited, and erased from the great history books. But here we are once again powering the future of dance music, and here I am offering my contribution to that great destination.”
You don’t see many pop-punk bands composed entirely of women of color, and that’s just one of the many things that makes Meet Me @ the Altar so special. The trio formed via YouTube in 2015 when the three members—Téa Campbell, Ada Juaraz, and Edith Victoria—all lived in different states. Their name comes from a text conversation where Juaraz and Campbell were bonding over their mutual love of a Mortal Kombat character, and Campbell said “meet me @ the altar.”
Talk about a marriage made in heaven. Meet Me @ The Altar feels like a fresh breath of punk that comes across as Paramore for a new generation. Energizing, youthful lyricism combines with screaming guitars and knocking production for an absolutely frenetic listen. “Say It (To My Face)”, the leadoff track on the group’s 2023 debut album, Past // Present // Future, makes you want to knock a bottle over someone’s head, and it’s delivered with such pubescent flair that you can’t help but run it back again and again.
While writing and recording Past // Present // Future, Meet Me @ The Altar drew inspiration from ’00s pop-rock artists like Avril Lavigne, P!nk, Kelly Clarkson, and Hillary Duff. “It’s probably rooted in misogyny how all that female-led rock from the early 2000s got overlooked and labeled as lame and not real,” Campbell told MTV. “That’s something that we don’t agree with. It was all so good.”
