Ahead of His ESSENCEFest Performance, Tank Had Some Words For Critics Who Think R&B Is Dead

If you’re still wondering about the presence of good male artists in the R&B space following Usher’s Lifetime Achievement Awards tribute at the 2024 BET Awards, look no further than TGT frontrunner and Grammy-nominated artist Tank.

Lighting up the stage at Caesar’s SuperDome alongside fellow group members Tyrese and Ginuwine on night two of the 2024 ESSENCE Festival of Culture, the “Can’t Let It Show” artist performed a medley of his own solo hits like “Please Don’t Go,” “When We,” and “Maybe I Deserve.” Interspersed throughout were songs from the trio’s Grammy-nominated album “Three Kings” as well as solo hits from the aforementioned other members.

The talent and endurance of the artists — especially Tank — were the highlights of Saturday’s hour-long set. With Tyrese noticeably under the weather and Ginuwine still sounding pretty decent (no shade!), it was clear to see that Tank stood out as the hype man, the one with the most crisp vocals and the one ladies in particular really, really wanted to see (The minute he took his shirt off, almost half of the crowd lost their minds. But that’s par for the course.)

Unlike last year, when most of the musical acts featured at the festival arguably catered to a younger audience with headliners like Megan Thee Stallion, ESSENCE brought things back to the root of all good music this year: R&B.

Speaking to The Root ahead of his performance alongside veteran singer/songwriter J. Valentine, cohost on their popular R&B Money Podcast on iHeartMedia and Charlamagne Tha God’s Black Effect Podcast Network, Tank expressed how excited he was about returning time and time again to the ESSENCE stage and being back in New Orleans with his “brothers” Tyrese and Ginuwine.

He also spoke about the ongoing online discourse about the purported lack of male R&B artists in the current landscape and assured folks that while there isn’t a current prince or princess of R&B (because we all know Usher still holds the top spot as the King), the genre isn’t short on talent, male or female.

“It’s a lot of them [out here], you’ve got Lucky Daye, Kenyon Dixon, you’ve got SZA, Coco Jones — Victoria Monet is going crazy. It’s so many of them, we aren’t short of talent in the R&B space,” Tank explained, while also giving a shoutout to Eric Bellinger.

“We have a board of R&B icons. Because you’ve got to think: at a time when R. Kelly was doing what he’s doing—it was just him. You couldn’t scratch that. When Michael Jackson was doing what he was doing, it was just him — you couldn’t touch him.”

“I think we have a lot of talented people in the space,” added J. Valentine. “People always say ‘oh, there’s many kings, many queens.’ But I think it’s really tough to really crown someone unless you’re completely hovering over the space and nobody else can get it. So I think we just have R&B royalty.”