OP has a point and here's why;
People forget how dead & irrelevant R&B was before Weeknd breathed new life into it by reinventing the entire sound, aesthetic and subject matter of the genre. Traditional r&b is corny as shyt. Weeknd & post Weeknd singers like Party keep it relevant to my generation.
Personally I feel that brand of R&B way more than the old shyt. R Kelly is the only real r&b artists I can fukk with and that's cause he the OG of this Hiphop influenced R&B and one of the rare few who pulled it off without being corny.