This course aims to critically challenge students in three primary ways: 1) describe some of the historical narratives and cultural influences associated with Rap and Hip Hop music 2) identify aesthetic qualities of certain styles (historical and contemporary) and techniques of Rap and Hip Hop practitioners 3) engage in dialogue and discussion surrounding rap and hip hop music and lyrics through your own perspectives. 

Week 4 literature –  Write 1 Paragraph about something you read from the following excerpts. These are relatively short reads and not too heavy on the theoretical stuff. 

This week’s literature is centered movements from the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

Week 4 film – Write 1 Paragraph about something you saw in the film.

This week’s film is a behind the scenes look at the founding of Death Row records in the early 1990s. It focuses on stories with the record label and is a documentary-style movie that features artists and practitioners from the era. “Welcome to Death Row”

Week 3 listening –  Write 1 Paragraph about something you heard or watched from these playlists. Try and listen to each year and briefly discuss some things you notice 1) about one specific video  or song and 2) any change over time you notice in sounds and aesthetics. 

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Primer

PRIMER

A beginner’s guide to hip-hop collective
Native Tongues

Eric Thurm
7/05/13 12:00am

Primer is The A.V. Club’s ongoing series of beginner’s guides to pop culture’s most

notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else

interests us—and hopefully you.

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Native Tongues 101

In the summer of 1988, two albums with eerily similar titles presented

radically different visions for the future of hip-hop. In August, NWA’s bomb

of a gangsta masterpiece, Straight Outta Compton, blew up the hip-hop

landscape, forever changing the posture, politics, and attitude of rap music

and rappers trying to be hardcore. But Straight Outta Compton was released just

a month after Straight Out The Jungle, the debut album from New York trio

Jungle Brothers and the first release from a future member of the Native

Tongues collective. Looking back, each album seems like a stylistic roadmap

for a different philosophy on the future of hip-hop: Where Straight Outta

Compton is aggressive and harsh and presents the members of NWA clad in

black Raiders Starter jackets, Straight Out The Jungle is as mellow and playful

as the ridiculous, endearing khaki safari gear Jungle Brothers wear on the

cover.

The image of Jungle Brothers looking unabashedly goofy while rhyming about

Afrocentric medallions and the difficulties of urban life in the late ’80s is

characteristic of the movement they spawned: Native Tongues. A loosely

affiliated crew composed of three founding groups (Jungle Brothers, De La

Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest) and a who’s who of innovative hip-hop at the

time, the members of Native Tongues were idealistic teenagers, hanging out

both in and out of the studio while making groundbreaking music. The

individual Tongues may have made better records as they matured, but the

core Native Tongues style can be traced back to the debut albums of its

founding members: Straight Out The Jungle, De La’s 3 Feet High And Rising, and

Tribe’s People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm.

Straight Out The Jungle is still very much a product of the boom-bap percussion

that was characteristic of East Coast hip-hop at the time, but Jungle Brothers

Mike G (Michael Small), Afrika Baby Bam (Nathaniel Hall), and DJ Sammy B

(Sammy Burwell) still include most of the elements of what came to be

known as the Native Tongues sound on this album. There’s some jazz

influence and extensive sampling (both of which appear on the Marvin Gaye

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homage “What’s Going On”), and the sort of social commentary made

popular by Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five’s “The Message,” which

is sampled on the title track. It also features several verses from a young Q-

Tip, who inaugurates “Black Is Black” by shouting out his newly minted

group, A Tribe Called Quest.

A critical hit mishandled commercially by Warlock Records, Jungle Brothers’

label at the time, Straight Out The Jungle might not have spawned a follow-up

album, let alone an entire movement, if not for the group’s manager Fred

Krute, better known as Kool DJ Red Alert. A rising star at 98.7 Kiss FM (and

Mike G’s uncle), Red Alert also had a management company, Red Alert

Productions, which became home to several Native Tongues acts, including A

Tribe Called Quest and Monie Love. After Straight Out The Jungle failed to

perform to expectations, Red Alert helped the crew dent the singles charts

with the added track “I’ll House You,” which has been noted as the first hip-

house track outside of the subgenre’s native Chicago.

Red Alert was also a member of Afrika Bambaataa’s Universal Zulu Nation, a

quasi-religious organization promoting unity and cultural awareness through

hip-hop. The Zulu ideals, embodied primarily through Afrocentrism and an

emphasis on individual identity, would find a home in the music of the Native

Tongues, many of whom were and remain members of the Zulu Nation.

Though the Zulu Nation began as an organization of several reformed Bronx

gang members led by Bambaataa, its philosophy found its way into the music

of three kids from the Amityville area of Long Island. Those teenagers—

Posdnuos, Trugoy (now known as Dave), and Maseo—became Plugs One,

Two, and Three as they formed the trio De La Soul. With a few sketched-out

demo tracks ready, De La hooked up with Amityville producer Prince Paul,

then a member of live hip-hop band Stetsasonic. The result was De La’s

classic debut, 3 Feet High And Rising.

In many ways, 3 Feet High And Rising is the quintessential Native Tongues

album. The record’s loose “D.A.I.S.Y. Age” (a backronym for “Da inner sound,

y’all”) concept and bright, flowery cover art are the best available distillation

of the Native Tongues stereotype, but its musical innovations were far more

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significant. The album invented, for better or (mostly) worse, the use of skits

on rap albums with a light narrative about a wacky game show. And Paul’s

crate-digging production exploded the possibilities of sampling as a means of

creating not only new beats with a hodgepodge of classic and occasionally

kitschy influences (“The Magic Number” prominently samples Schoolhouse

Rock!), but also innovative pieces of music that could stand on their own

without any MCing (“Cool Breeze On The Rocks”).

Perhaps more important for the collective’s future, 3 Feet High And Rising

contained the first track to showcase all three founding Native Tongues:

“Buddy,” which featured Jungle Brothers and Q-Tip on the studio version as

well as Queen Latifah and Monie Love on the remix. “Buddy” inaugurated an

era of collaboration among the founding members of Native Tongues, as well

as the beginning of the collective’s recruitment of a second wave of members.

De La Soul might not have even had the opportunity to make the album

without Tom Silverman of Tommy Boy Records. Silverman, an environmental

science major from White Plains, New York, was immersed in the dance

music and disco scene (his first venture in the music business was a disco tip

sheet) and started Tommy Boy with a $5,000 loan from his parents in 1981.

After getting into the hip-hop business with Afrika Bambaataa And Soulsonic

Force’s danceable debut, Planet Rock, Tommy Boy became a natural home for

Bambaataa’s musical and spiritual descendents. In addition to Bam and De La

Soul, Tommy Boy hosted Queen Latifah, Naughty By Nature, and Prince

Paul’s solo work. Warner Bros. snapped up other artists in the Native Tongues

orbit (including Jungle Brothers) with the option it acquired after buying

Tommy Boy and incorporating it as an imprint of the larger label.

De La Soul turned out to be a pretty good investment for Silverman; 3 Feet

High And Rising was a critical and commercial hit, eventually going platinum.

All of which happened, in large part, on the back of one of the least

interesting tracks on the album, “Me Myself And I.” That track heavily

sampled Funkadelic’s “(Not Just) Knee Deep” and Ohio Players’ “Funky

Worm”—the sampling equivalent of covering The Beatles. For years after the

release of 3 Feet High, “Me Myself And I” was the only song most fans wanted

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to hear at De La shows, an albatross that was still putting cash in the group

members’ pockets. Their reaction against the success of “Me Myself And I”

was a signal of the different directions each of the Native Tongues members

would take as they matured and achieved success.

De La Soul and Jungle Brothers profoundly influenced A Tribe Called Quest,

the nascent musical project of Queens high school students Q-Tip (né

Jonathan Davis, now Kamaal Ibn John Fareed), Phife Dawg, and alias-less Ali

Shaheed Muhammad and Jarobi White. Q-Tip and Phife were friends from

early childhood, while Q-Tip and Ali attended the same high school as Jungle

Brothers. That environment proved crucial to the eventual sound of A Tribe

Called Quest—while Phife and Ali worked on their battle-rapping and DJing,

respectively, Q-Tip hung out in the studio with Jungle Brothers and

contributed to the recording sessions for 3 Feet High And Rising. Before long,

Tribe recorded its own debut, People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of

Rhythm, one of the most playful (and weirdest) Native Tongues releases.

People’s Instinctive Travels isn’t the most cohesive record, and it’s the closest of

Tribe’s three classic albums to being a Q-Tip solo record (Phife only has a

couple of verses, while Jarobi is limited to behind-the-scenes contributions),

but it has remarkable depth for an album by four kids. Tracks range from

being socially conscious without being lame (“Description Of A Fool”) to one

of the only novelty tracks to truly transcend the form, “I Left My Wallet In El

Segundo.” But the dual standouts on People’s Instinctive Travels hit both nerve

centers of carefree youth: casual swagger on the Lou Reed-sampling “Can I

Kick It?” and undeniable, hormone-fueled lust blurred with a tinge of

romanticism on “Bonita Applebum.”

[pagebreak]

Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Q-Tip’s production was also a huge move in

introducing the world to jazz rap. There had been isolated jazz-influenced

cuts before (such as Stetsasonic’s “Talkin’ All That Jazz”), but People’s

Instinctive Travels’ various jazzy tracks—like “Luck Of Lucien” (a slick homage

to French rapper and Native Tongues collaborator Lucien Revolucien) and

“Youthful Expression”—created a sonic landscape where sampling jazz organ

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was as natural as heavy snares. People’s Instinctive Travels sounds a bit like a

creative combination of the De La and Jungle Brothers sounds: Q-Tip was not

only lucky to have spent time learning from Jungle Brothers, De La, and

Prince Paul in the studio, but he also got priceless recording lessons from

famed Queens producer Large Professor and from producer/prominent Zulu

Skeff Anselm, who was dating Q-Tip’s sister at the time.

Those three albums display idealistic teenagers fooling around and making

thoughtful, innovative music as if by accident—in Brian Coleman’s hip-hop

oral history Check The Technique, Phife compares the original Native Tongues

recording sessions to sleepovers. The almost haphazard nature of the

production extends to the origin of the Native Tongues name itself: According

to Michael Rapaport’s excellent documentary, Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels

Of A Tribe Called Quest, Q-Tip was at Afrika Baby Bam’s house playing around

on the turntables with Coming Together, a record by Motown-offshoot funk

group New Birth. One track on the album, “African Cry,” prominently

features the lyric “Took away our native tongues,” which became, after being

cut repeatedly as a joke and then in earnest, the name of a collective where all

the members seemed to be speaking the same language. Native Tongues was

born.

Intermediate Work

As the Native Tongues sound spread, other artists were sucked into its orbit.

One of the first and most important of these additions was a pre-film career

Queen Latifah. After Latifah came up as part of the trio Ladies Fresh while

she was still in high school in New Jersey, her first single, “Wrath Of My

Madness,” found its way to Tommy Boy A&R man Dante Ross, landing her a

deal at the label. In 1989, Latifah released her debut album, All Hail The Queen,

which includes production from Prince Paul and KRS-One. All Hail The Queen

is more vocal in its consciousness and in its Afrocentrism than almost any

other Native Tongues release. That’s especially true of its unabashed

feminism, a subject rarely addressed by the boys’ club of Jungle Brothers, De

La, and Tribe. On the Prince Paul-produced “Mama Gave Birth To The Soul

Children,” Queen Latifah plays the knowing mother while De La Soul plays

the soul children. And in “Ladies First,” along with its accompanying music

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video, Latifah’s lyrical activism found an outlet strong enough to sustain

academic examination, as it shouts out several prominent black women and

takes South African apartheid as one of its major themes. But “Ladies First”

isn’t just an exercise in trying to engage with feminism from within hip-hop

—it’s also dope as hell, and holds its own with the other Tongues.

In addition to being a badass political statement about apartheid and

feminism, “Ladies First” introduced Latifah’s protégé Monie Love to

American hip-hop fans. An import from London who contributed verses for

Jungle Brothers and De La Soul, and learned the business touring with Queen

Latifah behind “Ladies First,” Monie Love released her own debut album,

Down To Earth, in late 1990. Down To Earth is much more of a party record than

All Hail The Queen, spawning several charting singles ranging from the

Spinners-sampling exhortation to a woman in an abusive relationship “It’s A

Shame (My Sister)” to “Monie In The Middle,” a song written about Big

Daddy Kane’s refusal to ask her out himself while they were both on tour

with Latifah. It’s hard to imagine Monie Love, a female MC with a British

accent who was more interested in wholesome partying and poetry than

props, being even remotely successful without the founding Native Tongues.

Instead of being focused on poetry and positivity for idealistic reasons, Dres

(Andres Titus) of Black Sheep avoided gangsta rap because he had actually

been in prison for almost a year before spending the better part of a second

year in a halfway house. After that unpleasant experience, Dres vowed not to

glorify the life that had put him there. Once he was released from the halfway

house, Dres ran into Mista Lawnge, an old friend who had started running

with Red Alert and Jungle Brothers. With Dres rapping and Lawnge on the

boards, the pair set out to record A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing, their debut as

Black Sheep. Both the Black Sheep and A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing names served

to distance the group slightly from Dres’ criminal background—in a HipHop

DX interview, he recalls spending the entire year before the release of A Wolf

In Sheep’s Clothing with a gun on him and feeling more comfortable around

hustlers than people wearing kente cloths. Musically, A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing

distinguishes itself from releases by De La and Tribe in a few ways: It

embraces the less wholesome parts of the “party” half of party records in its

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obsession with sex (Q-Tip is featured on a song titled “La Menage”) and the

radio-ready rowdiness of its singles (especially “The Choice Is Yours,” a

ridiculously catchy track now famous mostly for being featured in Kia

commercials). It is also more down-to-earth than any Jungle Brothers or

Tribe release—the big posse cut is called “Pass The 40.” Otherwise A Wolf In

Sheep’s Clothing, a record made in part to prove Black Sheep could hang with

the rest of the Tongues, fits right in with their collected discography,

particularly the gangsta-mocking skit “U Mean I’m Not,” which reportedly

caused the entire Tongues crew to fall over laughing when Dres played it for

them.

In the same way Queen Latifah introduced American audiences to Monie Love

on “Ladies First,” the founding members of Native Tongues often used their

own singles to break in new affiliated artists. None of these introductions was

more successful than A Tribe Called Quest’s classic posse cut “Scenario,”

which prominently featured the group Leaders Of The New School. A group

composed of Long Islanders Charlie Brown, Cut Monitor Milo, Dinco D, and a

young Busta Rhymes (Trevor Smith), Leaders Of The New School was

anointed by Chuck D (who named Busta and Charlie Brown) during a stint

opening for Public Enemy. After Chuck introduced Leaders Of The New School

to Q-Tip, the group collaborated on a few of the sessions for Tribe’s second

album, The Low End Theory, including several alternate versions of “Scenario”

featuring Posdnuos, Jarobi, and even Tribe’s manager at the time, the late

Chris Lighty, who was a protégé of both Red Alert and Russell Simmons. The

crew’s debut, A Future Without A Past, spawned tracks like “Case Of The PTA”

that were far more focused on daily life in high school than the releases from

their fellow teenagers. Though they released two solid albums, Leaders Of

The New School are still remembered most for their verses on “Scenario” and

spawning the often-absurd, sublime career of Busta Rhymes.

Leaders Of The New School were also members of The Nation Of Gods And

Earth (also referred to as Five Percenters), an offshoot of the Nation Of Islam

popular in the hip-hop community that found a home with other Tongues

affiliates, most notably Brand Nubian. An old-school crew composed of three

MCs (Grand Puba, Sadat X, and Lord Jamar) and two DJs (DJs Alamo and

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Sincere), Brand Nubian came out of New Rochelle, New York, where the older

Puba had been a part of another group called Masters Of Ceremony before

hooking up with Sadat and Jamar. The first artist signed by Dante Ross after

he left Tommy Boy for Elektra, Brand Nubian released 1990’s One For All, its

only album as a full group before Puba left to pursue a solo career. (He later

returned for 1998’s Foundation, which lacked Sincere.) Like A Wolf In Sheep’s

Clothing, One For All combines serious, political material that might be more

aptly compared to KRS-One than De La Soul with playful, sexual humor and

funky beats on tracks like “Drop The Bomb,” which includes the hippest-ever

description of the politics of poverty. “Slow Down,” the group’s breakout hit,

features rhymes about the desperation of crackheads over an infectious Edie

Brickell sample, effectively capturing Puba as a man Ross describes in Check

The Technique as “caught between the Koran and the street.”

[pagebreak]

As One For All dropped, the founding Native Tongues were preparing to release

their sophomore albums. Jungle Brothers released the excellent Done By The

Forces Of Nature in 1989, which improved on Straight Out The Jungle and

included one of the great Native Tongues collaborations: “Doin’ Our Own

Dang,” which featured De La, Q-Tip, Queen Latifah, and Monie Love. But

1991 saw the release of A Tribe Called Quest’s and De La Soul’s remarkable

sophomore albums, The Low End Theory and De La Soul Is Dead. Down one man

(Jarobi left the group to go to culinary school) and dealing with the health

problems of another (Phife’s diabetes), Tribe came together on an album

that, while still lyrically excellent (“Yo, microphone check, one two, what is

this? / The 5-foot assassin with the roughneck business”), takes the Native

Tongues to a new sonic level. With the help of engineer Bob Power, Q-Tip

explored his fascination with none other than N.W.A. by ramping up the bass

on tracks like “Buggin’ Out” and “Scenario” while simultaneously bringing

the Native Tongues’ affinity for jazz to fruition—going beyond the track

“Jazz (We’ve Got),” jazz bassist Ron Carter plays live on “Verses From The

Abstract.” And De La Soul Is Dead took the raw musical talent of 3 Feet High And

Rising and went darker. While there are still joyous moments—“A Roller

Skating Jam Named ‘Saturdays,’”—there are just as many tracks like “My

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Brother’s A Basehead” and “Millie Pulled A Pistol On Santa” that deal with

crack addiction or child abuse. And De La’s skits, once used for game-show

shenanigans, were now employed to declare the end of the D.A.I.S.Y. Age.

Native Tongues wasn’t dead, but it certainly wasn’t the same.

Advanced Studies

What was arguably the driving force of Native Tongues—teenagers hanging

out and making music—met its logical conclusion in the work of Chi-Ali

Griffith (better known simply as Chi-Ali), who got his first famous verse on

Black Sheep’s posse cut “Pass The 40” and recorded his debut at age 14. That

album, The Fabulous Chi-Ali, was released in 1992 when he was 16. The record,

though nothing to sneeze at lyrically, features solid production and was a

surprising commercial success on the back of tracks like “Age Ain’t Nothin’

But A #” and “Funky Lemonade.” The older Tongues’ influence on the album

was palpable—“Let The Horns Blow” featured Dres, Trugoy, The Beatnuts’

Kool Fashion, and Phife Dawg, and the graffiti on the album cover reads

“Native Son… Native Tongue.” Though Chi-Ali did little musically after his

debut (besides an appearance on Dres’ first solo album), he made headlines in

a much sadder fashion. In 2000, Chi-Ali shot and killed his then-girlfriend’s

brother in the Bronx and evaded arrest for a period of just over a year, during

which he was featured on America’s Most Wanted twice. He then served a

prison term from which he was released in 2012.

The Fabulous Chi-Ali was successful in large part because it was almost

entirely produced by Native Tongues affiliates The Beatnuts. The only Latino

members of the collective, producers JuJu and Psycho Les, then calling

themselves Beat Kings, were introduced by Afrika Bambaataa to Jungle

Brothers, who dubbed them “nuts” for their clownish personas and for

carrying so many records to every show. After starting their musical

relationship with Native Tongues producing “Pups Lickin’ Bone” on Monie

Love’s Down To Earth and most of The Fabulous Chi-Ali, The Beatnuts released

their own debut, Intoxicated Demons, in 1993, showcasing the slimy jazz and

funk of the then-trio (including rapper Kool Fashion). Intoxicated Demons took

the Native Tongues sound and lyrically amped up both the comedy and the

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hedonism with lyrics like “Now, I’m on a rampage, prepare for the slaughter

/ Lyrical monster busting nuts in your daughter” on the Brand Nubian-

sampling single “Reign Of The Tec.”

By 1993, Native Tongues seemed to be drifting apart, as the founding

members each released an album representing different attitudes toward the

collective. Jungle Brothers’ J Beez Wit The Remedy ran into significant troubles

with Warner Bros. before its final, substantially watered-down version. De La

Soul’s Buhloone Mindstate, though a slightly more conventional Tongues

album, features little collaboration from a group that had already declared

their early sound dead. And A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders,

arguably the best album by a member of the collective, concludes with a

series of wistful tracks that appear to be summing up the end of something

special. Q-Tip has openly stated that The Low End Theory “really broke us out

of the Native Tongues stereotype.” On Buhloone Mindstate’s “In The Woods,”

Posdnuos pronounces, “That native shit is dead.”

But a slightly younger generation took up the Native Tongues mantle heading

into the new millennium. The crew inspired similarly minded artists across

the country, including Chicago native Lonnie Rashid Lynn, a.k.a. Common.

Though he’d been making music since the late ’80s, Common’s hip-hop

ambitions didn’t fully take off until a trip to New York introduced him to

Brand Nubian and Leaders Of The New School. His 1992 debut as Common

Sense, Can I Borrow A Dollar?, was a scattered collection of demo tracks, but

for the next album, Common and producer No I.D. (Dion Wilson) tried to, in

Common’s words, make “some cold-blooded shit that can get played with A

Tribe Called Quest.” The 1994 album Resurrection succeeded on all fronts. The

album was a leap forward musically, especially the classic “I Used To Love

H.E.R,” which uses a woman enraptured by the siren song of materialism as a

metaphor for gangsta rap’s thoughtless domination of hip-hop. Common was

only loosely associated with Native Tongues at the time, but closely affiliated

with their themes and positive energy. And Native Tongues became the

template for the Soulquarians, the early-’00s loose collective Common

belonged to, along with Questlove, Erykah Badu, and others.

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Though Common has had the most continued success of the late Native

Tongues, another artist from the Midwest with a crucial role in the

Soulquarians has had a substantial effect on contemporary music and greater

success in growing and evolving the Native Tongues sound. Born into a

musical family in Detroit, J Dilla came up with rappers Baatin and T3 as part

of the Detroit group Slum Village. The group’s first, unofficial record Fan-

Tas-Tic, Vol. 1 caught the attention of Q-Tip, who brought Dilla in to

collaborate with him and Ali Shaheed Muhammad as the trio The Ummah. As

part of The Ummah, Dilla was largely responsible for the sound of the last

two A Tribe Called Quest albums, and later produced much of Q-Tip’s solo

material before achieving a cult-like status all on his own after his death in

2006.

Back in New York, De La Soul’s fourth album, 1996’s Stakes Is High (the

group’s first without Prince Paul), a record deeply concerned with the state of

hip-hop (the titular high stakes), introduced a promising young MC going by

the moniker Mos Def . Though Mos Def had planned on releasing his debut

with the guidance of De La Soul, his chemistry with a similarly minded artist

named Talib Kweli led the solo release to be put on hold in favor of a

collaboration under the name Black Star. Perhaps the biggest difference

between that album, 1998’s Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star, and the earlier

Tongues releases is a consistent thoughtfulness that largely eschews feel-

good party tracks: Where 3 Feet High And Rising plays around with Schoolhouse

Rock! samples, Black Star’s “Thieves In The Night” is an homage to Toni

Morrison, and the group’s name is a reference to Marcus Garvey’s Black Star

Line. In many ways, Black Star is a culmination of the original ideals of Native

Tongues in an era when it seemed those values were being ignored by hip-

hop at large—not for nothing does single “Definition” recount and decry the

violent death of multiple MCs in the mid-’90s.

Miscellany

Some of the specifics of the Native Tongues membership have been disputed

over the years—in particular, the status of later affiliates like Common, Mos

Def, and J Dilla. But other artists who were definitely affiliated with the larger

crew haven’t remained as relevant or immediate, even those with notable

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contributions to hip-hop at the time. Trio Fu-Schnickens worked with Tribe

on a debut record that helped introduce kung-fu imagery to hip-hop before

Wu-Tang Clan and oversaw the beginnings of Shaquille O’Neal’s rap career

on novelty single “What’s Up Doc? (Can We Rock),” which has Shaq saying

Bugs Bunny’s catchphrase. Jamaican and Trinidadian trio Da Bush Babees

released two mildly successful albums featuring production from Ali Shaheed

Muhammad, The Ummah, and Posdnous, but the trio is likely most notable

for including several early verses from Mos Def on its album Gravity.

Some artists maintained the musical innovation of the earlier Tongues

records, but lacked the idealism. In particular, Prince Paul’s solo work is

engaging and worth listening to on its own, but can’t quite be pegged as

Native Tongues music—it’s far too broad, and is rarely socially conscious.

Still others advanced political ideology similar to Brand Nubian or Black Star,

but simply weren’t in the same circles—most notably trio KMD, which

featured heavy sampling over intensely political lyrics from idealistic

teenagers, including a young MF Doom still going by Zev Love X. Like KMD

and Doom’s later work, an extraordinary percentage of ’90s and ’00s hip-hop

was strongly influenced by Native Tongues. An account of every single artist

even loosely affiliated with a member of the crew would increase this list

exponentially. It’s enough to recognize that the original Tongues’

fingerprints are all over contemporary hip-hop, from Pharrell to Kanye West

to Kendrick Lamar.

Demerits

The Native Tongues may have presented themselves in opposition to some of

the less savory trends in hip-hop at the time, but they didn’t avoid social

tone-deafness. The worst of these songs thankfully never made it to an

official release. During the sessions for The Low End Theory, Tribe and Brand

Nubian collaborated on “Georgie Porgie,” one of the most unequivocally

homophobic tracks in the history of hip-hop (a genre already prone to bouts

of homophobia). In one of the best decisions ever made by a record label, Jive

refused to release the track; the beat was reused for “Show Business.” The

final track still featured the members of Brand Nubian with the exception of

Grand Puba, who declined to participate in protest. The bigotry of “Georgie

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Porgie,” while perhaps not so surprising from teenagers in the early ’90s

(particularly ones who made the “The Infamous Date Rape” on that same

record), is still shocking from the same group that made the exceedingly

nuanced “Sucka Nigga” and “Description Of A Fool.”

As the founding Native Tongues aged, their musical output became less

immediate. Jungle Brothers have continued to release a string of

unmemorable albums but aren’t currently together. While the final two Tribe

albums—Beats, Rhymes, And Life and The Love Movement—have some solid

tracks and an interesting new sonic direction (they were mostly produced by

Dilla under The Ummah name), they’re also fairly forgettable. After Midnight

Marauders, A Tribe Called Quest didn’t have much more to say. It’s telling that

the best track to appear on The Love Movement was an older bonus remix of

“Scenario.” Meanwhile, De La Soul has stayed together with a minimum of

fuss, releasing mostly decent albums and one phenomenal late-period record

(2004’s The Grind Date). The group has been making the rounds again in

preparation for its eighth album, You’re Welcome.

There’s been consistent clamor for a Native Tongues reunion since the

mid-’90s, with each of the members blaming the others for the delay in

making one happen. The tensions between the founding Native Tongues is

unfortunate, but in some ways is a blessing; it’s hard to imagine a real Native

Tongues reunion going well. The Native Tongues collective was formed, more

than anything else, by like-minded, idealistic youngsters developing intense

friendships based in a love of music. Watching an attempt to translate the

near-magical ties of wide-eyed adolescence to those same people in middle

age? Say no go.

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May 4, 2017
By Chris Daly and Zilla Rocca

Today, rap is a ubiquitous part of any playlist, popping up in seemingly every
subgenre of music that exists, but this has not always been the case. Flashback to
the mid-’80s, when rap was beginning to reach a larger mass audience thanks to
groups like Run-DMC and LL Cool J. While the earlier iterations of the art form were

Teddy Riley and
New Jack Swing:
An Oral History

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as silly and loose as they were funky, the genre still was considered a
predominantly “street” expression.

On the other side of the spectrum, R&B seemingly was stuck in a circular loop,
churning out forgettable fare that failed to strike a chord with many outside of the
genre’s existing adherents. The “Quiet Storm” format of R&B was dominant, with
overproduced, sophisticated and usually slower hits from Freddie Jackson, Peabo
Bryson, Anita Baker and Teddy Pendergrass maintaining a strong grip on
commercial sales. And then, like a petri dish left unattended, genres began to mix
and reproduce, and new art forms arrived.

What started as a local Harlem sound would pervade the American
consciousness for at least the next decade.

Enter New Jack Swing, which mixed rap, dance-pop and R&B with trace amounts of
disco, soul and rock & roll. What started as a local Harlem sound would pervade the
American consciousness for at least the next decade, with New Jack Swing
introducing the world to artists like Al B. Sure, Bel Biv Devoe and En Vogue. The
genre also breathed new life into acts like Bobby Brown and Janet Jackson, while
more established acts from Michael Jackson to Sheena Easton would splash in the
pool on certain albums and tracks. Perhaps more than any other, however, it was
the Harlem-born artist Teddy Riley whose productions and personal style came to
define New Jack Swing, a guiding light in both commercial and critical corners of
the genre.

What started as a musical direction quickly seeped into movies (House Party),
television (In Living Color, Martin), fashion (Cross Colours) and practically all
aspects of the zeitgeist. In this oral history, we track down some of the most
important players in the game to get their take on the beginnings, ups, downs, in-
betweens and future of New Jack Swing, and the looming influence of Teddy Riley
in particular.

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The Pre-New Jack Swing Era

© Vince Joy

While rap and R&B seem almost joined at the hip today, this was not always the
case. In the mid-to late ’80s, hip-hop was capitalizing on its first wave of success.
R&B, conversely, was not pumping out the hits it once had. The two genres simply
did not cross paths, the rap world largely considering itself too “hard” to play in the
“softer” R&B pool.

Prince Charles Alexander

Multi-platinum recording engineer and producer

PRINCE CHARLES ALEXANDER

There’s been a division between rap and R&B from the very beginning, from 1979
on. Rap was a youth movement, and R&B was old music.

KWAME

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You gotta understand, at that point radio did not want to play hip-hop between 6
AM and 6 PM.

PRINCE CHARLES ALEXANDER
From ’79 to maybe ’84, you had the first generation of hip-hop. Then around I think
1987, Public Enemy comes in and you get that second wave of hip-hop. It got really
hard in ’87, so by ’90 if you were a rapper, you were a thug… It was a stereotype
that rap was thuggish, and R&B was the Temptations and the Four Tops, everybody
doing steps.

Hank Shocklee
Hip-hop producer and member of the Bomb Squad

HANK SHOCKLEE
Hip-hop and R&B were in two separate spheres, two separate universes. It was a
thing where we just wanted to take the music that we loved from the streets and
hear our favorite R&B records mixed with it.

PRINCE CHARLES ALEXANDER
Funk music had been obliterated by 1985, [so] hip-hop was the dominant platform.
In 1990, Teddy Riley comes out with this group singing with these really aggressive
hip-hop-ish beats. A lot of singers breathed a sigh of relief and was like, “Oh,
you’ve given us a music that can relate to young people again, and we can sing.”

Kwame
Rapper known for such hits as “Oneovdabigboiz” and “Ownlee
Eue”

KWAME
The first thing that I recognized as New Jack Swing is Classical Two “Rap’s New
Generation.” That record set off New Jack Swing before people knew what New
Jack Swing was. It was between “Rap’s New Generation” and “Go See the Doctor”
by Kool Moe Dee. Those two records started that bounce. What took it over the top
was Guy, of course.

Doc Ice
Member of Whodini and U.T.F.O

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DOC ICE
When that New Jack Swing came, you knew it was different. It felt good. It felt
energetic and to me it gave a lot of respect to the dancers in hip-hop.

HANK SHOCKLEE
If you listen to a lot of the records that were out in the ’80s, they were very, very
musical. There were a lot of parts. There were bridges. They were lush. It was more
elaborate. Teddy Riley’s stuff was sparse, minimal. It had the feel and flavor of the
streets.

Markell Riley
Member of Wreckx-N-Effect, brother of Teddy Riley

MARKELL RILEY
New Jack Swing, we knew it was picking up steam when we heard certain songs
that Teddy had done floating around Harlem in cars. Before Teddy became
mainstream, it was more like a local Harlem vibe that was going on with him. We
knew it was something, we just didn’t know when the world was going to connect.

© Vince Joy
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Creating the Sound

Teddy Riley
Architect of the New Jack Swing sound

TEDDY RILEY
Well, the New Jack Swing sound is … It’s so much behind it, but I can tell you in a
few words, or a lot of words. New Jack Swing is a sound of music that doesn’t have
a color line. And it doesn’t have an expression, it fits the occasion. But it’s a
collaboration of rap and singing together. It’s a collaboration of different genres of
music and styles that is put together all in one bag. I would say New Jack Swing is
heavy R&B, heavy rhythm and blues, all stuck in one bag.

KWAME
Once Guy came, that R&B flavor of New Jack Swing took over.

Dae Bennett
Drummer/producer who built Hillside Sound

DAE BENNETT
Prior to the Guy record [“New Jack City”], Teddy was doing mostly tracks for rap
artists. He was like a hired gun, one session hits.

BRUCIE B

His music was like a roller skate [party]. Everything had the rhythm. You heard it
with the Doug E. Fresh [record “The Show”] too. Even his hip-hop beats had a little
New Jack Swing in it.

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Guy – New Jack City

HANK SHOCKLEE
Teddy was a hybrid between R&B and hip-hop. He was young enough to feel the
streets, but he was musical enough to understand the relationship of what R&B
music needed. That put him in a unique position.

DAE BENNETT
It was all about Teddy and his musicianship. I think that’s really what it comes down
to. He was probably the most imitated artist at that time.

HANK SHOCKLEE
R&B at the time in the ’80s really didn’t accentuate the drums. The one thing that
Teddy did was he accentuated the drums. The drum programming and the beats
were the thing that caught your ear first. Then the fact that he had good melodies –
his melodies were simplistic yet effective.

Brucie B
New York club and mixtape DJ

BRUCIE B
You’ve seen the difference in R&B with the sound, [specifically] with “I Want Her”
[by Keith Sweat].

DOC ICE
Here comes ’89 going into ’90. The music started to change. It went from having a
good time partying to this hardcore West Coast hip-hop. In the meantime Teddy
Riley was working with Guy and then he started to put that sound on. When he
started to put that sound on, Full Force, who were my producers at the time,
recognized it as well, and we did a song called “Word to the Wise.” Then they did a
remix that was in swing mode called, “Word to the Wise (Funk Swing Mix).”

Bosko Kante
Music composer for the ’90s TV hit In Living Color

BOSKO KANTE
The whole fusion of the harder hip-hop beats with R&B singing, Full Force had a
role in that, too.

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DOC ICE
We saw it. We recognized it. The energy in it was heavy. Because of how Juice and
Wiz and myself was into the dance so heavy, our dance moves went over well. A lot
of people saw those moves and they started to pick it up, but they was already on
the following of the New Jack Swing. We had to actually play catch-up musically,
but we understood it before that.

PRINCE CHARLES ALEXANDER
One of the things that I wanted to do was to figure out what Teddy Riley was doing
with these drum patterns that everybody was calling New Jack Swing. The MPC had
a certain swing function that could change a 16 note pattern. I was just trying to
figure out with my gear exactly which swing Teddy Riley had.

DAE BENNETT
The first Guy album in its entirety was recorded live. That’s actually why it sounds
so great. One of the greatest feelings [is] that every time I hear that album come up
on the radio or something, you can definitely feel it. It’s basically a live Teddy Riley
record. Just played every part and a lot of it is improvisation on the fly. We were, of
course, still on tape. Editing was still done with razor blade. We initially didn’t have
any sequencers or anything like that.

HANK SHOCKLEE
What made it really New Jack Swing was the snare. The snare had to be loud and
obnoxious and not in tune with the rest of the stuff. That made it stand out.

PRINCE CHARLES ALEXANDER
The DX100 was a small, maybe 25 key, keyboard. That one sound, that bass sound,
is the sound that was used on Heavy D’s record. It was used on Keith Sweat’s
records. That bass sound is so familiar to me, I could tell you exactly when I hear it.
We called it “LatelyBass,” because that was the name of it from the Yamaha
instrument. That bass was a specific thing.

Guy – I Like (1988) ♫Guy – I Like (1988) ♫

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Guy – I Like

The Look

DAE BENNETT
I remember there was a song on that Guy album called “I Like.” We had the
background vocals and sampled them into an Emulator 2. We would actually record
them to tape and bounce them, and then we would bounce them to two track and
slide them in. We would reach the reels, let them go until we got one that was on
time. That was way before samplers. Then, when samplers came on the scene,
we’d spend nights just messing around trying to get new sounds.

PRINCE CHARLES ALEXANDER
I got the AKAI S950 and put my vocals in there and moved them around. I was like,
“Wow, this sounds just like what Teddy’s been doing with the Guy stuff.”

TEDDY RILEY
I have to say that it all started when my father bought me a Telstar keyboard. And
that takes you all the way back to the vintage days when I had a Telstar little
keyboard, and then I elevated and graduated to having my first Fender Rhodes. And
every time I got a piece of equipment, I made a piece of music.

© Vince Joy

Every good movement has its own look. What started as a small, Harlem movement
was beginning to take the world by storm, and with it came rainbow colors, polka
dots and positivity.

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BRUCIE B
On that street level, the fashion and the dancing seemed like it all went together.
Because Teddy was always with the cars, with the jewelry, with the good clothes.

TJ Walker
Co-creator of Cross Colours clothing line

TJ WALKER
The actual music, the performers and everything that was going on at that time, it
was all big and colorful. It was definitely based on color, because they would
mention it in the songs and they would portray it in the songs, too. There were even
songs that were just called that.

Jeff Adamoff
Former VP of Creative Services at MCA Records

JEFF ADAMOFF
At that time, videos were what made the project a success.

TJ WALKER
Everything was kind of oversized and overdone in terms of that, and fun. And that
was the whole thing: It was fun.

Angela Hunte-Wisner
Stylist

ANGELA HUNTE-WISNER
I worked with Guy, Teddy Riley, and all the new jack swing artists at that time. I
think the films like Juice, Above the Rim and others were influenced by how we
dressed artists in their videos. The music went with the clothing. I feel like in ’50s,
’60s, and ’70s their fashion accompanied their music. New jack swing and new jack
swing clothing complemented each other. Fatigues, combat jackets, bamboo
earrings, fitted caps, and many more styles became the norm. Back in the ’90s, you
didn’t see girls wearing spandex dresses. An around-the-way girl was way hotter
than a girl in a spandex dress. Hence, LL Cool J’s song, “Around the Way Girl.”

BRUCIE B
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Harlem cats are always, like, low key. The smooth brothers, you know: not too
rowdy. You can definitely tell them Harlem cats.

DOC ICE
My brother Philip, he would take me to these clubs. He carried this knapsack and I
was like, “What’s in the knapsack?” He was like, “My clothes.” I’m like, “Your
clothes? What do you got clothes in there for?” He would go in the bathroom,
change his clothes. He’d come on that dancefloor and he would sweat, sweat,
sweat. Then he’d go back in that bathroom and switch and he’d go, “OK, we going
to another club.”

April Walker
Creator of Walker Wear clothing line

APRIL WALKER
Music and fashion went hand-in-hand and it still does today. But in the ’90s, there
was this whole spirit of creativity.

TJ WALKER
When designer brands like Calvin Klein, and these types of brands start to emulate
us in terms of color and style and silhouette, and doing oversized products, that’s
when we knew that we had struck a chord with people. When we first came out and
people actually placed the orders for the product, they really didn’t know where to
put it in the store. That was a big question that they would always ask Carl [Jones,
co-founder of Cross Colours] when he was actually working with the buyers and
everything. They said, “Well, who do we hang it next to?” And what Carl would tell
them is that you don’t hang it next to anyone, you make us our own department.

BOSKO KONTE
I had my hi-top fade, I had a Kid ’n Play; it was just a fun time. That was some of the
most fun stuff, the clothes. I always remember the pants with the spray painted
tags on them.

KWAME
If you watch House Party, this clear Kwame lookalike [is in the film], to the point
people think that I’m in House Party. I’m like, “No, I was actually there [on set].” It
was weird because it was just like Salt-N-Pepa, the same way. A lot of us was there
in the background, but for some reason could not be in the movie. [It] was very
weird watching a bunch of extras look and act just like me be in the movie.

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The Industry Takeover

© Vince Joy

Once the dollars started rolling in, corporate America perked up to take their bite of
the pie. New Jack Swing was on the small screen, the big screen, radio, MTV… It
was everywhere. That’s when things started to go sour.

PRINCE CHARLES ALEXANDER
Teddy repopulated the black music scene just himself as a producer, then other
people started to try to bite on the sound. Literally, if you heard 15 songs [on the
radio], almost all those 15 songs were produced by Teddy. New Jack Swing was
almost literally a one man phenomenon.

HANK SHOCKLEE
Bobby Brown’s record started off with “Don’t Be Cruel,” which was L.A. Reid. It
didn’t really blow up until Teddy Riley got to it with “My Prerogative.”

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Bobby Brown – My Prerogative

KWAME
Bobby Brown was as huge as you can get at the time.

HANK SHOCKLEE
Once [“My Prerogative”] happened, Bobby Brown became the biggest artist in the
world at that moment, not just an R&B star and not just a North American star. He
was an international star. Once the spotlight goes on, the whole world tunes in.
Everybody wants to get that new sound.

BRUCIE B
Everybody wanted that sound.

TEDDY RILEY
When I started touring and hearing my record and all of my records in other cities. I
was like, “Man.” I thought my record was just playing on WBLS and KISS and WKTU.
That’s what made me think that, “Dang. We’ve got a thing here.” Like, you go to the
city, and you hear your record on the radio, while you’re in the limo, coming from
the airport. That’s crazy.

DAE BENNETT
I felt everyone was kind of seeing the success that he had, you know? And then
somebody over at Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis Records, I felt like they borrowed a lot,
you know? And then they started borrowing from each other, you know?

HANK SHOCKLEE
If you listen to L.A. and Babyface productions before they heard Teddy Riley’s New
Jack Swing record, you listen to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’s productions before, it
was a different flavor. Once those guys got onto the mixing of a little bit more hip-
hop drums with your R&B arrangement and musicality to it, that’s when it took on a
mainstream face.

PRINCE CHARLES ALEXANDER
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Kwame – Only You

That was a time when producers were really starting to become stars.

HANK SHOCKLEE
If I’m producing a record and they say, “Hey, I want a Teddy Riley style of record,”
the first thing I would say is, “Go hire Teddy Riley.”

KWAME
If the record label wanted you to go “radio” or “mainstream” or “crossover,” they
tried to pressure you into [doing New Jack Swing]. You had a big enough budget,
they would definitely try to push artists to spend some of that budget on Teddy
Riley. And you figure, you get the one Teddy Riley single, you gonna go
mainstream…

The only hip-hop records that were getting played at that time [on radio] is if you
were singing over a Teddy Riley beat with a hook. And the only other record that got
played at that time was my record “Ownlee Eue,” which came out in 1990. But
“Ownlee Eue” was never designed to be comparable to New Jack Swing. I just
wanted a record that played between 6 AM and 6 PM, and so I figured “Alright,
make it danceable, put a singing hook to it and call it a day.”

BOSKO KONTE
I feel like I learned how to sing listening to Aaron Hall on that first Guy record,
“Piece of My Love.”

PRINCE CHARLES ALEXANDER
I think Aaron [Hall] in Guy was the one that really set it off and made Teddy’s beats
make sense. Making a beat is making a beat, but having a song, a really good song
on top of the beat, and then having a great performance of that song on top of the
beat. That’s where Aaron really contributed to the sound more so than anything

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Bell Biv DeVoe – Poison

else, but then Teddy was able to take that and go to other artists and still have
success.

KWAME
I was on tour with Guy. Teddy would have a row of Akai MPC60’s on stage. And also
Avid computer sequencers on stage as well. He would run his shows very high tech.
And it was just amazing to me that these shows were being run in sequence with
the same drum machines that he was making the records with and then the band
playing along with it. I have not seen shows [of] that type since.

DOC ICE
When he produced Guy, “Groove Me,” when them songs came on we just went
bananas. It was our goal to be known in those clubs, but when it hit the club you
can see and feel the energy that the songs were bringing. That swing was bringing.
It was overwhelming. People partied.

KWAME
One night hanging out, going to a club, Mike [Bivins] said what do I think about him
forming a rap group with him and Ricky [Bell] and Ronnie [DeVoe]. I was like, “For
real? You’re going to not be New Edition?” He said, “There isn’t any promise in New
Edition right now and we still want to do our thing. Bobby’s over here being the King
of R&B. Ralph is trying to do his solo project.”

HANK SHOCKLEE
[Producer] Hiriam Hicks had came to me and said that, “Hey man, I got these three
guys from New Edition.” Everybody was going solo and these three guys didn’t
have anybody, really. They didn’t have no real place because they was doing most
of the backing rap.

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The End of New Jack Swing

KWAME
[Mike Bivins] plays “Poison,” and it’s the lowest demo form. It just sounded terrible
to me. I remember I couldn’t put my head around it, and I was like, “Well, where
would the raps go?” … “You know. In empty spaces and stuff.” It was me, Dana
Dane, my friend Dougie and Mike in the car, and he was like, “I just need some
rhymes for it.” I remember Dana was like, “I can write some rhymes for that.” And
Dougie was a rapper, too, and he was like, “I can write some rhymes for that.” By
the time we got to the club, I handed him the rhymes. He was like, “What’s this?”
And I said, “It goes like this.” He played the beat – it was a real simple flow. “This is
how it goes: ‘Poison, deadly, movin’ slow…’ Can you remember that?” And he’s like,
“Yeah.” I said, “OK, cool, you got your rhymes.”

HANK SHOCKLEE
The first thing that I thought [about Bel Biv Devoe] was to make Michael and Ronnie
rappers and let Ricky do the singing. So instead of having the remixing done when
you have the R&B artist have a guest appearance with the rapper, now the whole
system is self-contained. Ronnie and Mike, they can’t be street rappers. They have
to be what I considered to be R&B rap.

KWAME
It was the New Jack Swing/R&B artists … They still were separatists when it came
to hip-hop. You know, it was cool for them, too. They made more money. They hung
out with the ball players and the actresses and all that kind of stuff, but the rappers
still had to be with the rap people.

HANK SHOCKLEE
They can’t go heavy and go dark and go onto the street zone. Then they’ll get
crushed. You have to think about your artist, and you’ve got to put your artist in the
best position that they can to win. Bell Biv Devoe were singers that morphed into
the rap.

Today’s trends become yesterday’s, giving way to tomorrow. For as strong a run as
NJS had, it was not immune to changes.

HANK SHOCKLEE
The culmination of it was after Al B. Sure. [You] started seeing groups like Color Me
Badd. You had H-Town. You had a bunch of groups that were coming out at the time.

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— Kwame

I think that once it got to Color Me Badd, it got to the point where it was like, “OK,
this is officially mainstream now.”

MARKELL RILEY
To be honest with you, [the end of New Jack Swing], it’d probably have to be in the
mid-’90s when Teddy started working with Blackstreet. The sound started
changing. Not only with us, with Teddy doing production, but new producers
started coming out. When a new producer come out and they do something hot,
then people start flocking to it.

KWAME
I think his manager, Gene Griffin, was putting him in situations to make money. “We
need an R&B group. Okay, this R&B group worked. Let’s make another R&B group.”
And then Teddy, at the same time, wanted to be in the front, so he put himself in
every group that he made.

TEDDY RILEY
I’ve witnessed how even country folks and fans have felt about “No Diggity.” I’ve
seen a country line dance to “No Diggity.”

HANK SHOCKLEE
Once a producer becomes the artist, all of a sudden he’s losing his value as a
producer. I couldn’t be the producer and the artist at the same time. It’s two
different heads. Because it’s very difficult to see yourself. This is what makes the
value of a producer so important. The producer’s job is to see you in a light that you
can’t see for yourself. If you could see it then you don’t need the producer.

DOC ICE
When Teddy Riley started to produce different groups, when he started to go to
Blackstreet, it put him in forefront. I just want to keep it real: When he started to
produce different groups and then Wreckx-n-Effect, they started to break up and
then Guy started to break up. For New Jack Swing, without the leader of it, it kind of
faded.

Soul II Soul to Mary J. Blige [“Real Love”] – New
Jack Swing was dead in two records.

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HANK SHOCKLEE
For me, the New Jack Swing apex moment was Johnny Kemp “Just Got Paid.” After
that, everything became redundant. The snake is eating its tail. You can’t go back
and try to recreate something that already had its moment. It’s like telling the joke
twice.

KWAME
What changed R&B from New Jack Swing to postmodern R&B, the way it is now,
was Soul II Soul. So when Soul II Soul dropped, it was like, “Wait-wait-wait. You can
actually sing over a breakbeat? Without trying to make a hip-hop sounding beat?”
Soul II Soul to Mary J. Blige [“Real Love”] – New Jack Swing was dead in two
records.

BOSKO KANTE
Jazz elements like the horns and saxophones – that was the influence that was
starting to come in. Hip-hop was getting a little bit darker. Dr. Dre really started to
take over; that was another sound that was more cool to be. The New Jack Swing
sound was happy. It wasn’t cool to be just happy.

PRINCE CHARLES ALEXANDER
“Flava In Ya Ear” crushed in 1994. “Flava In Ya Ear” was like “Happy” by Pharrell,
how [it] dominated airways. “Flava In Ya Ear” just dominated, especially the urban
airways, down at ground level. By that time, Teddy was up in the stratosphere. He
was in the stars.

KWAME
Then there was Puffy. With the Puff Daddy remixes, half the time it was just the
sample. Everything just went super sample crazy.

PRINCE CHARLES ALEXANDER
I didn’t really have a lot of respect for Puffy as a musical entity because he’s a
promoter guy. But I did find out over time that what Puffy was doing, this ability to
promote, he’s extremely powerful and needed by anybody who does music. Teddy’s
all that. He’s a musical guy. But Puffy is kind of like this icon on a whole ’nother
level. And Teddy didn’t do that because at the heart of it all, Teddy likes to make
music. Puffy likes to sell music. It’s a different reality, but a necessary reality. Teddy
Riley was a producer. Bad Boy was a label.

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Michael Jackson – Remember The Time

KWAME
Once Michael [Jackson] stepped in the picture, Teddy stopped working with
everybody. And no one else got Teddy Riley beats but Michael Jackson. I think
Michael’s input, along with the genius of Teddy Riley, turned New Jack Swing into
pop. So there’s a whole section of the world that only knows “Remember the Time”
and “Dangerous.” They have no idea who Guy is. They have no idea who High Five
is. They probably don’t even know who Teddy Riley is.

BRUCIE B
When he did “Remember the Time” with Michael Jackson, you just knew that’s it.
The Dangerous album, he did most of that album, Teddy Riley. You can hear it. And
that’s a good album, too.

KWAME
There’s always something going on in the streets that’s not going on in the clouds.
Michael Jackson was in the clouds. And the Soul II Soul sound and that Uptown
sound started to come, then that was in the streets. By the time the Dangerous
album faded, so did New Jack Swing. New Jack Swing started with The Classical
Two and ended with Michael Jackson. It ends at “Remember the Time” to me.

TEDDY RILEY
I don’t think it lost steam, because it didn’t just take me to make that music. It took
a conglomerate of people who has kept it alive, you know what I’m saying? So, it
didn’t really go anywhere. It’s just that maybe it wasn’t my time, ’cause I always say
the music business is made up of turns. It’s like, when it’s your time, you shine.
When it’s not your time, take a step back. Do other things to keep yourself relevant.
And that’s what I did.

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The Lasting Impact

© Vince Joy

TEDDY RILEY
You know, New Jack Swing was inspiring to everyone. Why? Because it was the
type of music that made you smile when you hear it. And it first comes on, you’ve
got that smile of where you were when that record was out, what you were doing,
who you were with, how you were feeling.

BOSKO KANTE
I think it was huge in terms of bringing hip-hop to a broader audience. The whole
fusion of the harder hip-hop beats with R&B singing. Teddy Riley was definitely one
of the inspirations for playing talk box and incorporating it into my production. He’s
had a huge influence on my career in the sense of “In Living Color” and the stuff
that I did influenced by his sound.

KWAME
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— Brucie B

When Teddy moved to Virginia, he tapped a lot of talent: Timbaland, Pharrell and
Darkchild. Rodney Jerkins. These guys are coming out of the Teddy Riley school of
producing. I think that maybe Teddy really just wanted to be on the artistic side, but
I think the progression that Teddy should have had was a label that was comparable
to Def Jam. Sometimes great musicians may not necessarily be great business
people, especially someone that genius, who is original. Teddy created something
that the entire industry became consumed with within two or three years.

When you start hearing Teddy Riley music, you just
know, “OK, it’s party time.”

MARKELL RILEY
My highlights was just sitting in the living room watching Teddy produce certain
artists or these artists coming to our apartment and recording in our living room. He
had a four track or a 12 track that he could convert over. You had people standing in
the tub recording. [Then] me and my friends [would be] sitting on a bench, and the
music is just blasting through the window and we going, “Aw, man. That’s crazy.
That’s a hit. That’s the joint.”

HANK SHOCKLEE
New Jack Swing is the template for today. It’s just metamorphasized. Drake is doing
New Jack Swing. Beyonce is doing New Jack Swing. Rihanna is doing New Jack
Swing. OK – now you bring the snare down, you tune it to the rest of the track – but
the same vibrations are still there.

BRUCIE B
Teddy – that sound is timeless. It’s always going to be around. When you start
hearing Teddy Riley music, you just know, “OK, it’s party time,” because it’s on and
popping. You don’t play them records in the beginning of a party.

DAE BENNETT
Teddy and that whole scene, when I look back, I felt it was the last of the grassroots
authentic scenes to come off of the street. Everything now, or pretty much since
that time, has been pretty contrived. Now it just seems to be corporate shooting
down at us. Then, it was more like a blade of grass breaking through the cement
sidewalk.

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On a different note

Special thanks to Andres Torres from Wax Poetics for granting the use of previously

published interview material with Angela Hunte-Wisner and April Walker.

Header image © Vince Joy

Interview: Teddy Riley on His Virginia Years

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