The R & B Club is a group founded by music aficionado Ashley-Dior Thomas, entrepreneur, broadcaster, and writer, Marcus Dowling, plus well-respected journalist Justin Tinsley, to celebrate the legacy of soul music. Foremost in this quest is the "Diary of an R & B Legacy" series, which will highlight key artists and their legacies from R & B's golden era.

Up next is classic R&B artist Marvin Gaye! It’s hard to overstate the cultural impact Marvin Gaye has had on music. As one of Motown’s renaissance men, Gaye could do it all. He wrote, produced and played a variety of instruments. Most of all, Gaye possessed a classic R&B voice that was edged with grit yet tempered with sweetness. A musical visionary, he conceived of albums as something more than individual songs, whether it be his early collections of show tunes and standards or later thematic masterworks about the state of the world (1971's What’s Going On?), sexual politics (1973's Let’s Get It On) and marriage (1978's Here, My Dear).