Your Daddy B. Nice first became aware of R. Kelly's relevance to Southern Soul R&B in 1998, when—along with the release of his retro classic, "When A Woman's Fed Up"—he appeared in a stunning music video on BET and MTV for Kelly Price's debut single, "Friend of Mine."

On its simplest level, "Friend Of Mine" was the story of a girl (Kelly Price) betrayed by her sexy lover (R. Kelly) and her best female friend. Price called up her "godfather," Mr. Biggs, Ronald Isley (at which point the song became a duet), pouring out her tale of misery, and Isley insisted on telephoning R. Kelly. At that point all three singers joined in a truly amazing call-and-response climax.

Now, in 1998, your Daddy B. Nice wasn't even aware that something called "Southern Soul" existed. Nor was he aware that as the millennium approached more and more R&B artists were pounding on the door of southern, if not national, radio stations. Underground R&B finally had momentum again. All that was lacking was recognition and interest, a spark that would light a fire under listeners beyond its core southern black audience.

Listeners like your Daddy B. Nice, who had followed disco into funk into rap and hiphop, always searching for the next great musical thing, had bought into rap because so-called "urban" R&B and "smooth" jazz had abandoned the grit and passion of 60's R&B. When high-profile R&B newcomers like Erykah Badu and R. Kelly (who produced Price's "Friend Of Mine") decided to strike out with their own efforts at traditional R&B, it was a revelation and a turning point.

Suddenly soul-starved listeners like your Daddy B. Nice had a hint of what we wanted—and a reminder of how much we had lost, musically speaking, over the last quarter-century. Erykah Badu's single "Tyrone"—the very essence of Southern Soul—appeared in 1997. R. Kelly's "When A Woman's Fed Up"—equally soul-drenched--came out in 1998.

The importance of these commercial R&B-based tunes was to alert the old soul crowd, the fans that who had been swimming in the commercial R&B currents, that there was another kind of classic soul in the air. Concurrently, a new, younger generation of Southern Soul artists woke up to a new atmosphere of creativity, possibility and practicality—for what is more important to an emerging artist than an audience and the ability to make a living?

Suddenly selling music in the classic Stax, Hi, and Motown traditions didn't sound so fantastic. Suddenly there was a fighting chance to actually replace aging (or gone-but-not-forgotten) stars of chitlin' circuit R&B like Bobby "Blue" Bland, Johnnie Taylor, Ann Peebles, Clarence Carter, Z. Z. Hill, Benny Latimore and Tyrone Davis.

Suddenly up-and-coming performers like David Brinston, O. B. Buchana, Pat Brown, Syleena Johnson, Sheba Potts-Wright, Robert "The Duke" Tillman, Jackie Neal, Theodis Ealey, Sir Charles Jones and so many others had a viable direction in which to pursue their artistic dreams.

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