R&B vocalist and songwriter Jonathan David Buck, better known as Jon B, has been a remarkably distinctive performer over his three decades in the business. His career has featured periods of immense stardom as well as lengthy stretches out of the spotlight, but his popularity as a live performer has never waned. His summer tour takes him across the U.S. and to the U.K., including a two-night stop at City Winery on Monday and Tuesday.
A white artist whose embrace of Black culture and music has been paramount since his days as a teenager in a musical family in Altadena, Calif., Jon B has always exemplified authenticity in performance and presentation. He’s never shied away from the issue of being a white performer in a style created by Black artists, and he’s always followed his instincts musically, even when they conflicted with the opinions of producers or label representatives.
Right after he graduated high school in the early 1990s, he set to work trying to establish himself as a recording artist. Eventually, Tracey Edmonds, then the wife of R&B mogul Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, recognized Jon B’s star quality, feeling he would connect with broad R&B audiences in the same way other white artists had, from Hall and Oates to Mitch Ryder and beyond. Working with the Edmondses and their label, he showed off his skills on some outstanding projects, including co-writing the closing track “In the Late of Night” on Toni Braxton’s second LP Secrets as well as several songs for After 7, an outstanding R&B vocal group featuring Babyface’s older brothers Melvin and Kevon Emonds. Jon B even got a co-writing credit after the fact on “Say You’ll Be There,” the Spice Girls’ smash-hit second single, whose melody and other elements are very similar to one of those songs he penned for After 7, “What U R 2 Me.”
Around this time, Jon B exploded as a marquee artist. He wrote and produced many of the songs and performed an array of instruments on his 1995 debut studio album Bonafide. The record was certified gold the next year, fueled in part by the hit single “Someone to Love,” which Babyface wrote and produced and appears on as a featured singer; the song also earned a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals.
The track firmly established Jon B’s signature sound, fortified on the LP’s second successful single “Pretty Girl.” His strengths throughout include a charismatic, soulful delivery that communicates sincerity even when the lyrics are at their most maudlin or syrupy. His 1997 follow-up LP Cool Relax proved even more successful. It yielded several hits, including “They Don’t Know,” a tune chronicling personal difficulties and rumors about his relationship, as well as “Don’t Say” and “Are U Still Down?” a powerful pairing with none other than Tupac Shakur. The album went platinum.
Through the years that followed, Jon B continued to enjoy artistic success with 2001’s Pleasures U Like, which included features from Nas and Faith Evans, and 2004’s Stronger Every Day, which included appearances by Scarface and Beenie Man. Respectively, the albums went to No. 3 and No. 17 on Billboard’s R&B albums chart, but Jon B still felt strongly that the commercial results could have been better with improved promotion. During the same period, his first marriage ended in divorce, and a fire at his studio destroyed thousands of dollars in equipment as well as irreplaceable recorded material. Jon B found himself in a deep depression. But he persevered, and a second marriage a few years later not only helped him recover but also aided him in staging a comeback with the well-received LP Hopeless Romantic in 2008. While another full album of new originals, Comfortable Swagg, came in 2012, Jon B has mostly focused on live appearances over the past decade.
Following an acclaimed appearance on BET’s Soul Train Awards show in 2018, he collaborated with fellow R&B heavyweight Donell Jones on the much-loved duet “Understand.” The track kicked off a series of singles that continued on through the pandemic lockdown and will hopefully lead to an album sooner than later.
Now that it’s possible to tour again, Jon B is back where he seems most at home lately: on the road. Over and over again, he’s proven himself a standard-bearer among soul and R&B singer-songwriters. Whether or not he repeats his commercial highs of the 1990s, it seems there’ll be an audience eagerly awaiting his next act.
