RNB Sundaze
Pratt Street
Hartford
May 31, 2026
The red brick road in the center of Downtown Hartford played host this weekend to RNB Sundaze, an R&B block party put on by DJ MAB. By the time I arrived, Pratt Street was already jammed with beautiful women in skin-tight clothes, vendors showing off their wares and, of course, the driving rhythms of 50-plus years of R&B blanketing it all.
If there was a hit from the '90s and 2000’s, DJ MAB banged it for the crowd. "Poison" by Bell Biv DeVoe. Fatman Scoop and Faith Evans. Chris Brown. Mariah Carey. Beyonce. Frankie Beverly and Maze. DJ MAB hit all of the R&B standards, and a few surprise tracks too, like the viral hit "Spend Dat."
The event drew visitors from far and wide. Ray and Angela drove up from Meriden for the event. While the music was part of the draw, Angela said that she made the trip for something more.
“We came for the togetherness, the community and the positive vibes,” she said. “We need that more in the world, and I’m loving that I’m seeing it out here.”
aqFor Ray, it was about ringing in the new season.
“In New England, summer starts after Memorial Day,” she said. “That’s the only reason we need to be outside.”
Indeed, people from all over Greater Hartford agreed with her. The promise of goodish weather and great music drew out several of my former classmates from the Bloomfield High School Class of 2003 (also known as the Greatest Generation™). It’s such an out-of-body experience to talk to the same people I had 8:00 AM gym with twenty years ago about marriages, new kids and careers.
Speaking of blasts from the past, R&B music itself is in a peculiar place. While I greatly enjoyed all the music, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say the vast majority of the songs were at least a decade old. That’s not a knock on DJ MAB for his song selection; I’m hard-pressed to think of any recent R&B songs I would include in a dance party set list.
It’s true that R&B has always had a “grown and sexy” vibe to it (aka it’s for old people), but the songs we danced to were popular when I was a kid. So yes, crooning about lost love and heartbreak does cross age barriers. There were plenty of hip and happening young people crowding the streets last night, listening to music made before they were born. Does the genre have nothing new to offer for today’s youth to look back on fondly someday?
Admittedly, it’s a problem that goes beyond R&B and music in general, but those are ramblings for another time. Whether the songs were old or not, DJ MAB still spun the best of the best, while friends danced and laughed together and the fragrant smells of cigar smoke and marijuana filled the air.
And it’s not an R&B function without some R&B line dancing. RNB Sundaze was a chill, great time, whether I was dancing or people watching or just vibing out. I really hope we get another one before the summer is over.
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Jamil goes to Hartford Public Library to hear a brass quintet.
