Or maybe the execs are telling Black artists "nah" slow, soulful songs aren't selling, but then turn around and push the Adeles and Sam Smiths as true soul artists. But they don't sound like R&B artists to me. They sound like pop artists that sing with more feeling. But they are blurring the lines in order to marginalize Black R&B artists. Just like the song Mary J. Blige had with Sam Smith, they didn't play her verse on the white stations, but they played the hell out of the song with her verse on the 2 Black stations we have.
10-12 yrs ago somebody flawlessly executed the plan to completely marginalize R&B as a genre.
The 1st step was to fracture it by dividing it into sub-genres.
2. take the less pop/upbeat songs and slowly remove them from urban radio and onto Adult/Contemporary stations
3. give even more airplay to rap/r&b collabs
4. make hiphop the official genre of black people under the age of 35... which opened the door for...
5. pop artist with hiphop beats to get urban radio play which open the door for...
6. white pop artist who make adult contemporary/r&b-ish music to get called soul artist.
Its a cold world. The execs will say actual R&B doesn't sell, yet they'll call Sam Smith an R&B/soul artist

. I just feel if the Elle Varners and Janel Monets got the same kind of promo/budget they'd be legit stars. The days of being a R&B star is just over and black music as a whole is worse for it.