Tyrese

J Records was an American record label, owned and operated by Sony Music Entertainment, and was distributed through the RCA Music Group. J Records was founded in 2000 by industry veteran Clive Davis with $150 million in financing from BMG, after his ousting from Arista Records the same year, and... initially operated as an independently managed company distributed through BMG. Olivia was the first artist to sign to J Records, but was later dropped due to poor album sales. In 2001, the label found success with its multi-platinum record inaugural release, Songs in A Minor, the debut album of Alicia Keys, which sold over 12 million copies worldwide. The same year, the label had another success with the platinum-selling debut album by O-Town. Later, established artists like D'Angelo, Luther Vandross, Jamie Foxx, and Monica would join the J roster, the latter three going on to find multi-platinum success with the label. In 2002, BMG bought a majority stake in the label. The same year, J Records began functioning under the RCA Music Group, where Davis had been appointed president and CEO, and signed American Idol winners Fantasia and Ruben Studdard.
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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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