![]() As hip-hop became more popular in the 1980s, R&B responded by slimming down and toughening up. Nonetheless, Motown deserves part of the blame for its icy streak. The decline of Motown was in many ways inevitable given the remarkable evolutions of the label’s tentpole artists – like Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye – along with the development of the one of the biggest stars of all time in Michael Jackson: It stands to reason that no label could continue to function at this level forever. ![]() “I would hate it for it to just go away, which is what tends to happen with legendary African-American organizations.” In 2011, longtime Motown recording artist Erykah Badu went so far as to tweet, “Motown folded.” “I’ve watched it go from 200 to 100 to being basically looked at as an imprint,” he says. Boyz II Men, Brian McKnight and Erykah Badu provided no small successes in the Nineties and beyond, but Kedar Massenburg, who helmed Motown from 1999 to 2005, describes its path over the last decade as “ever-shrinking.” Starting in the late 1980s, the label was absorbed by a series of large corporate entities, losing both its standalone status and its identity. Unfortunately, Motown has been hobbled ever since. Names like Smokey Robinson, the Supremes, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5 only hint at the label’s legacy. Through the Sixties and Seventies, Motown Records was a culture-shifting force: Founded by Berry Gordy in 1959, it became one of the world’s most successful black-owned businesses, an independent, trend-setting, discrimination-defying juggernaut.
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