Maxwell (Eric Johnson) Around this time 25 years ago, a new artist planted the seed for what would become a new genre. His name was Maxwell, and he sounded nothing like the heavily sampled hip-hop-inspired R&B musicians that dominated the airwaves. His voice harkened back to the days of Motown. Maxwell’s silky smooth falsetto was accompanied by orchestra level instrumentation, and something that up until that moment had been left behind in the ’80s — the horn solo. The album “Urban Hang Suite,” which turns a quarter-century-old this year, helped usher in an era of R&B called neo-soul. The new genre welcomed the likes of Erykah Badu, D’Angelo and Lauryn Hill.