Short answers, pulled from the story.
Kedar Massenburg coined the term neo soul in the late 1990s to market a style of music emerging from traditional R&B. He was an entrepreneur at Motown Records who established Kedar Entertainment Inc. in 1995 to release breakthrough recordings by artists like D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, and Maxwell.
Neo soul is distinguished by its use of live instrumentation and conscious lyrics rather than digital sampling. Most works are album-oriented and incorporate elements of jazz fusion, funk, hip hop, rock, reggae, and African music while emphasizing elegant, jazz-tinged R&B mixed with subdued hip hop.
D'Angelo released his second album Voodoo in 2000 serving as an alternative to mainstream late 1990s R&B and hip hop. Ben Ratliff of The New York Times called it a succes d'estime proving the force of this new music.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the musical collective Soulquarians contributed significantly to the neo soul movement. Members included D'Angelo, The Roots, Erykah Badu, Bilal, Mos Def, Common, James Poyser, J Dilla, and Q-Tip.
Massenburg felt there was a need to label these artists so listeners could understand what they were hearing against the producer-driven, digitally approached R&B dominating the charts at the time. He believed marketing labels helped define the movement even though many artists involved remained ambivalent about the term itself.