R&B drumming sits beside hip-hop but isn't the same thing. Hip-hop is descended from drum machines and tends toward the hard, the dry, the programmed-feeling. 90s R&B is descended from soul and gospel and tends toward the smooth, the warm, and the song-supportive. The drummer's job in 90s R&B is to be present without being noticed — to lay down a pocket the singer can ride.
The vocabulary in this lesson is the four moves you'll use most often: the cross-stick on 2 and 4 (a softer alternative to the snare backbeat), the swung-16th feel (16ths uneven so the groove has bounce), the syncopated kick on the & of 2 (the new-jack-swing kick), and a Babyface-era groove that combines them.
Cross-stick
A cross-stick (sometimes called a "side-stick" or "rim-click") is played by laying the stick across the snare drum head with the butt-end resting on the rim and striking the rim with the shaft. The result is a sharp, woody click — quieter and warmer than a snare hit. It's the canonical R&B backbeat sound, especially on slower songs and during verses where a full snare hit would be too aggressive. The renderer notates a cross-stick on the snare line (same as a normal snare); read the tip to know which sound to make.
Swing 16ths
"Swing 16ths" means the 16th notes are unevenly spaced — the second of each pair plays slightly late. It's the same idea as swung 8ths in jazz, but applied at the 16th-note level. Most 90s R&B has some degree of swung 16ths; modern R&B sometimes has them and sometimes doesn't. The notation can't show this — you have to hear the recording or set the metronome's swing-16th feature, then play the 16ths so they line up with that grid.
New Jack Swing Influence
The "new jack swing" sound (Teddy Riley, Bobby Brown, early Boyz II Men) was 80s R&B with a hip-hop kick pattern bolted on top. Its signature is the kick on the & of 2 — a syncopated push between the snares. By the time R&B rolled into the mid-90s with Babyface, Jam & Lewis, and the rest, that kick was standard equipment.