Ashanti and Keyshia Cole Gave Us the Soundtrack for Heartbreak and Resilience
The R&B singers will meet in the latest installment of ‘Verzuz’
R&B’s strongest power is its ability to help us heal. Voices leap from speakers and headphones to soothe our pain. In the 1980s, women turned to Phyllis Hyman and Karyn White to let go of their superwoman capes. In the ’90s, Toni Braxton and Mary J. Blige figured out how to unbreak hearts while vowing to not shed a single tear. And in the early ’00s, a new crop of female R&B singers — most notably Ashanti and Keyshia Cole — rose as torchbearers to uplift women who came of age that decade.
The singers, who will come together on Saturday as part of Timbaland and Swizz Beatz’s Verzuz series, are beloved for creating music that reflects the universality of heartache. Unfortunately, it’s one of the biggest things that connects us as Black women. Many of us have grappled with sorrow that often feels like a stipulation in relationships. Like the R&B singers before them, Ashanti and Keyshia managed to find beauty in the suffering and spun it into hit-making gold.
After guesting on Ja Rule’s “Always on Time” and co-writing Jennifer Lopez’s “Ain’t It Funny” remix, Ashanti made her solo entrance with 2002’s “Foolish.” Created with a sample of DeBarge’s 1983 “Stay With…
