If the album is to be defined as Neo Soul then what gives it that exclusivity if other artists such as Miguel Alicia Keys Erykah Badu and others don t get when describing their albums which have the same roots the same influences the same marketing but yet critics aren t explicitly calling these albums strictly Neo Soul albums Alicia Keys last three albums do not have Neo Soul affixed in their list of genres on their respective articles In fact in addition to soul Pop and R B are both listed on the pages of those albums Girl on Fire album The Element of Freedom As I Am Take those labels off if her albums are just supposed to be Neo Soul like the way it is on The 20 20 Experience And perhaps if Byron Lee and the Dragonaires whom are known to be Calypso Soca band put an album out and a critic calls it Zouk or Zydeco but yet the music is clearly the same as the music they ve put out before when is the line drawn before we decide that maybe the critics may have judged it hastily or perhaps they are misguided if the music obviously falls in the band s native style Wikipedia has an article on the Punta Music which is music of my culture the Garifuna people but what stops a critic from saying it s pop or neo soul then having Wikipedia and the people who read reviews accept it as such Would that not be taking away the cultural context Would that not be debasing the originality of the said style Would that not give way to confusion to a person who knows nothing about the music Where is the line drawn I m saying where s the consistency Why not describe the music in a holistic sense and not just based on what a couple people no matter how credible might assume it to be The reviewer Steven Hyden described Mirrors as Zepplinesque does that make it a rock song because he said so In Pitchfork the writer described Don t Hold the Wall as having Bha g rhythms does that put the song in that genre I m not following this logic Speaking to the claim that Pop and R B describing the root of most popular music The 20 20 Experience can be Neo Soul to some people but it can t be denied that it is also Pop since it s on the pop charts and the argument of whether it is pop or not is moot because of it s popularity and extent of exposure and it is R B because it s presence on the R B charts which just as easily gives way to how the album is marketed also the way the Neo Soul style was when it first emerged Yes Pop Rock and R B is the etymological root of most popular music but that does not stop writers of album articles on Wikipedia from using them to describe the popular music they are describing If that mattered then those aforementioned genres should never be used to describe the music on an album released under the scope of popular music if the aim is to describe it so perfectly and narrow mindedly