Communication is the key to life.
Communication is the key to love.
Communication is the key to us.
—“Communicate,” TLC
I was born in the year 2000 and because of this I often call myself a “millennium baby.” It’s a label of pride—born at the start of the century. It makes me feel special like I’m part of a cool inclusive club even though I wasn’t even around for the infamous bug in which the name Y2K comes from. As I’ve gotten older, this yearning for a time I don’t quite remember has only gotten stronger. My Gen-Z brain still tries to wrap my head around the fact that there was a time when the internet felt new, and where technology was rapidly changing and people felt generally excited for what the future had in store. Still, for many Black women such as myself, the future is often a scary idea full of anxiety and wishful thinking, but when I listen to artists like TLC inviting me to “communicate” with them on a futuristic R&B beat, I’m filled with a sense of awe as the sounds of a computer booting up call me to action—technology would be my muse.
Y2K seems like an overused buzzword now in 2024, but in the 24 years since the “viral” hoax, it seems like nostalgia for this time is stronger now than ever. Yet, as the world entered the New Millennium, and the Y2K problem came and went, a new century brought about an ever-expanding idea of what the future could hold for Black women. In 1999, TLC released their acclaimed album FanMail; Destiny’s Child was forcing all of us to say their names; Napster had the music industry on edge; and Black women artists and their fans were exploring the endless possibilities and hope for what the internet could bring. A continuation of the Afrofuturist vision of the 1970s, the year 2000 brought a new sense of hope and optimism—where Black women could move from imagining themselves traversing outer space to cyberspace. TLC couldn’t predict where the internet would take us way back in 1999. However, this need for communication amidst the dial-ups and pagers is a lasting theme even today as technology shifts into magnitudes we could only dream of.
But first, let me pause and rewind. I’d like to take us a few years back to 1996. The year in which the culture as we know it shifted in preparation for the coming millennium. The year that the journey across cables and wires was an open frontier. The year of Aaliyah’s One in a Million and the creation of a new sound: Y2K R&B.
Y2K R&B is a fusion of traditional R&B elements with futuristic production techniques i.e. R&B for the New Millennium. It was a genre that embraced the tech optimism of the time in its sound, lyrics, and videos to create a world of endless possibilities for its artists and listeners. As mentioned earlier, artists like Aaliyah had an elegant sense of futurism, one which was crafted with the help of producers Missy Elliott and Timbaland as they incorporated these sounds of the future into their music. Galactic beams, shimmering synths, and innovative samples permeate One in a Million's songs as Missy Elliott invites Aaliyah and the listeners into "the new world of funk" on the opening track “Beats 4 Da Streets.” It was here on One in a Million that Y2K R&B was born and would soon spread to other artists and albums into the late 90s and early 2000s.
During this era, icy blue hues, chrome designs, and the use of special effects dominated our screens. Lyrics embracing communication (or lack thereof) and allusions to digital technology made up a good portion of the albums that came out around this time. The importance of this genre cannot be understated as it linked ideas about technology and futurity to Blackness and Black urban culture. We see this in music videos such as when girl group Blaque speaks in digital code in “Bring It All to Me” or when Aaliyah rides on a computer-generated question mark in “We Need a Resolution.”
R&B's sonic palette was shifting and changing to adapt to the new ideas, methods, and sounds of the digital age. Gone were the days of white-dominated alternative rock and long emotional power ballads of the early 90s. Y2K R&B was modern music for the internet age, endlessly galactic, almost cyborg. This was due to the rapid growth of technology during this era allowing for more ways that Black folks, specifically Black women, could express their lived experiences and communicate them to the masses. From Missy Elliot’s Da Real World, Brandy’s Full Moon, and Toni Braxton’s The Heat, the era was filled with different, otherworldly, and futuristic alternatives to other music of the day that centered Black women’s lives and catapulted their voices into the future. This was more than an aesthetic—it was a movement. Describing the impact of R&B on the culture in his book Feenin: R&B Music and the Materiality of BlackFem Voices and Technology, Alexander G. Weheliye writes that R&B demands action from its audience stating that:
R&B music in particular refuse(s) detachment and “objectivity,” often demanding an immediate response to get on the dance floor or remain in my seat at the club or party, to press either the skip or repeat button on my phone, or to turn up the volume on the car radio or rotate the proverbial dial to change the radio station in repugnance, in the process compelling me to show up more fully as a listener, a critic, a scholar, a thinker, and a fan.
No matter where you’re listening to these songs, be it the dance floor, cookout, pool party, club, or bedroom, each place becomes a site to imagine and create futurity for yourself and others. From Y2K R&B a new world was crafted right out of the speakers, and Black women were leading that charge. R&B music’s history as an avenue for Black women to display their emotions unapologetically is a testament to this fact. Joy, sadness, anger, heartbreak, and love are on full display within the music and were only magnified by the technologies that helped build, distribute, and digitize that message. It’s why I often prioritize listening to these tracks on actual CDs versus streaming. I often wonder what it was like for people to pop in the CD of Whitney Houston’s My Love Is Your Love and hear Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins’ infectious beats at the start of "It's Not Right but It's Okay,” or to watch Janet Jackson morph into metallic liquid in the music video to Busta Rhymes’ “What’s It Gonna Be?!” on the VH1 Top 20 Countdown. While listening to these songs, the pull of nostalgia kept me going and allowed me to envision worlds that could one day be my reality. Plus they were just that damn good!
However, delving into aesthetics extends beyond the comforting tug of nostalgia; it can effectively furnish a comprehensive understanding of an era, encompassing its values, media, and technology. How best to redefine our sense of what the future holds than to look back on the music of the Y2K era and explore our imaginations for the endless possibilities of, and towards, revolutionary optimism. As Left Eye herself raps on “No Scrubs” you cannot lose focus on what’s in front of you and people who wish to speak to you need to come with the right knowledge and energy:
Can't forget the focus on the picture in front of me
You as clear as DVD on digital TV screens
Satisfy my appetite with somethin' spectacular
Check your vernacular, and then I'll get back to ya
Left Eye’s flow is impeccable and pairs well with the cybernetic visuals in her chrome robotic outfit, moving along with the camera as it's pointed to her, emphasizing her image and voice being broadcasted to the masses. Her verse and song allude to the fact that the revolution will be digitized which we see play out today as social media users continue to mobilize and demand action on these platforms.
We also see this aesthetic and genre returning in the music of some current acts today such as Pinkpathress’ UK Garage Heaven Knows, Amaarae’s genre-defining Fountain Baby, Joyce Wrice’s cool blue-tinted Overgrown and UK girl group Flo’s discography reminiscent of girl groups past on tracks like “Fly Girl” (coupled with a Missy Elliott feature and sample). Still, in our current era marked by morally dubious CGI, AI vocals, invasive surveillance technology, biased social media algorithms, and frequent data breaches, we are prompted to question the ethical limits of our technological progress. How far is too far, and can one escape from anti-Blackness amidst the technological revolution?
In this increasingly dystopian landscape of the 2020s, what vision could we conjure for a techno-utopia? Where misogynoir ceases to exist both in the physical and digital realms? I believe we don’t have to have it all figured out now, but hopefully listening to these tracks can get us thinking—and possibly dancing. With this insight, maybe one day we will envision a future reminiscent of the Y2K R&B of years past. A future full of hope, joy, rebellion, and a way for us to continue learning from the songs that have played a role in the mixtape of our lives. Until then, I’ll keep these songs on repeat and pop in another CD.
If you want to learn more about this era and music, check out these playlists to get immersed in the sound of Y2K R&B: