R. Kelly

Sony Music Entertainment is the second-largest global recorded music company of the "big four" record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, the United States subsidiary of Japan's Sony Corporation. The company, which evolved into Sony Music, was founded in 1929 as the... American Record Corporation through the merger of several smaller record companies. In the depths of the Great Depression, the Columbia Phonograph Company in the U.S. was acquired by ARC in 1934. ARC was acquired in 1938 by the Columbia Broadcasting System . The Columbia Phonograph Company had international subsidiaries and affiliates such as the Columbia Graphophone Company in the United Kingdom, but they were sold off prior to CBS acquiring American Columbia. RCA Victor Records executive Ted Wallerstein convinced CBS head William S. Paley to buy ARC and Paley made Wallerstein head of the newly acquired record company. CBS made Columbia its flagship label with Okeh its subsidiary label while deemphasizing ARC's other labels.
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Blackground Records is an American record label owned by entertainment attorney and artist manager Barry Hankerson and his son Jomo Hankerson. In 1993, Hankerson formed the label, and Aaliyah became its first signee. At the time, Hankerson was managing R. Kelly, and was able to get his label Jive... Records to distribute Blackground's releases. In 1996, Blackground obtained a lucrative distribution deal with Atlantic Records, just before the release of Aaliyah's second album, One In A Million. Often playing distributor hopscotch, in 2000, Blackground switched over to Virgin Records. One year later, it moved again, this time finding a home at Universal Motown Records Group. In 2003, JoJo was signed on Blackground and she is the youngest artist who signed on Blackground and first Caucasian. As of October 2009, Blackground will be distributed by Interscope Records, also part of Universal Music Group. In 2010, Blackground partnered with former Universal Motown Senior Vice President of Promotion Gary Marella to distribute his new label Roma Records. Their first signing is Jordy Towers, who formerly went by the name Optimus.
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The Zomba Group of Companies was a music group and division which was owned by and operated under Sony Music Entertainment. The division was renamed to Jive Label Group in 2009 and was placed under the RCA/Jive Label Group umbrella. In 2011, the RCA/Jive Label Group was split in half. Multiple... Jive Label Group artists were moved to Epic Records while others stayed with Jive as it moved under the RCA Music Group. In October 2011 Jive Records was shut down and their artists were moved to RCA Records. Founded independently in the mid-seventies by Clive Calder and Ralph Simon, the group has had interests in music release, distribution, production, publishing, equipment rental, recording studios, and artist management. Though the financial structure and annual revenue of Zomba during the company's independent period was probably only known to CEO Clive Calder , Zomba was widely regarded as the most successful of the independent music companies.
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Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B and RnB, is a genre of popular African-American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was... originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular. The term has subsequently had a number of shifts in meaning. In the early 1950s, the term rhythm and blues was frequently applied to blues records. Starting in the mid-1950s, after this style of music contributed to the development of rock and roll, the term "R&B" became used to refer to music styles that developed from and incorporated electric blues, as well as gospel and soul music. By the 1970s, rhythm and blues was used as a blanket term for soul and funk. In the 1980s, a newer style of R&B developed, becoming known as "Contemporary R&B". Jerry Wexler of Billboard magazine coined the term "rhythm and blues" in 1948 as a musical marketing term in the United States. It replaced the term "race music", which originally came from within the black community, but was deemed offensive in the postwar world.
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