Silk, LSG + More Songwriter Royalties

These songs are earning more now than they ever have, and most of them are pushing thirty years old. The catalog sits behind a run of R&B favorites: Silk's "Meeting in My Bedroom" and "If You," LSG's platinum "My Body," and K-Ci & JoJo's "Crazy." Over the last twelve months it brought in $16,973, up about 6% on the year before and a touch above its three-year average. The longer view is the real story. Back in 2009 these same songs paid around $1,400 a year. Today they clear more than eleven times that.

Almost all of that comes from streaming, about 82%, with another 12% from broadcast and satellite radio. The interesting part is which services pay it. Apple Music is the biggest single source at roughly 21%, ahead of Pandora at 18% and YouTube around 17%, with Spotify near 8%. That mix works in the catalog's favor, because Apple Music has no free tier and pays more per play, so these songs earn more per stream than the raw numbers would suggest.

The catalog also keeps refreshing itself, because newer artists keep building on it. Smiley's 2025 single "2 Mazza," with Drake, is built on Silk's "Let's Make Love," and 2Rare's "Rare's Room" (2023) reworks "Meeting in My Bedroom." Since the catalog owns a writer's share of those new records too, the same melody ends up paying twice.

These are durable R&B songs with a twenty-five-year habit of growing rather than fading, a payout mix tilted toward the platforms that pay best, and a steady flow of new songs reinventing the old ones and feeding the same catalog.

For a detailed analysis of earnings trends, cash flow projections, and investment criteria, review the full Investment Memorandum.

The catalog runs on a set of R&B records that have become genre standards, most of them rooted in the late 1990s and 2000s.

Silk is the backbone. The Atlanta group, discovered by Keith Sweat, became one of the most successful R&B vocal groups of the decade, and three of the songs here come from their 1999 platinum album Tonight: the slow jam "Meeting in My Bedroom," the ballad "If You" (No. 13 on the Hot 100), and "Let's Make Love." Smooth, hook-driven quiet-storm R&B was Silk's signature, and these are among its most durable examples.

"My Body" comes from LSG, the late-1990s supergroup of three already-established solo stars, Gerald Levert, Keith Sweat, and Johnny Gill. Released in 1997 as the lead single from their double-platinum debut Levert.Sweat.Gill, it reached No. 4 on the Hot 100 and spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the R&B chart, and it remains the trio's defining record.

"Crazy" is a K-Ci & JoJo single. The brothers Cedric and Joel Hailey first rose to fame fronting the influential R&B group Jodeci before becoming one of the era's most dependable hitmakers as a duo. Released in 2001 from their platinum album X, "Crazy" hit No. 11 on the Hot 100 and found a second audience on the Save the Last Dance soundtrack.

The catalog also reaches beyond its R&B core into hip-hop. "Please Excuse My Hands" (2008) is a Plies single featuring Jamie Foxx and The-Dream that climbed to No. 8 on the R&B chart, and "Fuckn With Me" (2016) is a cut by the veteran R&B singer Tank.

The newest material comes from a younger generation reworking the older songs. "2 Mazza" (2025) is a single by Toronto rapper Smiley, signed to Drake's OVO Sound, and features Drake himself; it is built on Silk's "Let's Make Love." "Rare's Room" (2023), by the rapper 2Rare, rebuilds "Meeting in My Bedroom" for a new crowd. Two solo R&B singles from 1998 round out the set, one of which reached the Hot 100 top 25.