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| Mary J. Blige
burst onto the music scene in 1992 and was dubbed the "Queen
of Hip Hop Soul." |
Rhythm and BS?:
The Slow Decline of R&B, Part Two:
New Jack Swing, Mary J. Blige and
the Coming Hegemony of Hip-Hop
By Mark Anthony Neal
SeeingBlack.com Music Critic
Talk
about R&B music here!
As ubiquitous as it is today, as recently as 15 years ago hip-hop
faced a real battle just to be heard on urban radio. Like Soul and
Rhythm and Blues before it, hip-hop was too publicly black for advertisers,
and when it found its way on the playlists of big market urban radio
it was often after-hours on the weekend. There were a few exceptions
—Whodini, for example, doesn't get enough credit for their melding
of hip-hop and R&B (courtesy of Larry Smith) on tracks like
"Friends", "Funky Beat" and in particular "One
Love", a strategy that Heavy D and the Boyz later exploited
to become a radio-friendly favorite. The success of Jody Whatley's
collaboration with Rakim, "Friends" (1989), made some
R&B artists and labels more willing to rent-a-rapper for some
street credibility, but at the same time, it was still common practice
for labels to deliver to radio versions of R&B singles in "rap"
and "no rap" mixes to maximize radio airplay. Ultimately
it took the sound christened the "new jack swing" to bring
record labels and urban radio on board with the changing dynamics
of R&B.
Teddy Riley is generally recognized as the genius behind new jack
swing, a sound that married the old-school harmonies of the black
church with a hard rhythmic edge. Riley's group Guy (originally
featuring Aaron Hall and Timmy Gatling) was the primary vehicle
for his production, but he also produced Johnny Kemp ("Just
Got Paid"), Keith Sweat ("I Want Her"), James Ingram
("I'm Real"), Boy George ("Don't Take My Mind on
a Trip"), the Winans ("It's Time") and Michael Jackson
("Remember the Time"). The range of artists that Riley
worked with gives some indication of new jack swing's impact on
the recording industry.
| What
was most important was maintaining complete control over the
urban contemporary market. If hip-hop happened to crossover—so
the thinking was in the late 1980s— it would be simply
gravy. |
Riley might have been the true innovator of the swing, but Bobby
Brown gave it its public face. Bobby Brown was the first true embodiment
of hip-hop in the R&B world, even daring to drop a rhyme or
two himself, like a low-rent LL Cool J. Many folk looked askance
a few years ago when Whitney Houston referred to her husband as
the "king of R&B", but the reality is that Brown's
breakthrough recording, 1988's Don't Be Cruel, is singularly
responsible for the trajectory of R&B well into the 1990s. It
is virtually impossible to imagine the careers of R. Kelly, Dave
Hollister, Jaheim, Joe, Avant, Usher and Justin Timberlake without
the success of Don't Be Cruel, which produced five bonafide
R&B and pop hits, including "Every Little Step", "Rock
Wit'cha" and, of course, "My Prerogative", produced
by Riley.
In a 1988 New York Times feature on Brown, Peter Watrous
was prophetic when he suggested that Brown's "success could
have important implications.... If [his] achievement is followed
by the deserved success of others, then perhaps the wall, kept sturdy
by radio, press and record companies, that has historically divided
black and white music worlds will begin to crumble." Behind
Watrous's prescient observation was the realization among the major
labels that hip-hop possessed real commercial potential beyond urban
audiences. The popular view is that the majors got involved with
hip-hop in the aftermath of successful crossover releases by Run-DMC
(Raising Hell) and the Beastie Boys (License to Ill)
and the strong response to MTV's Yo! MTV Raps (1988). While
this view may indeed be correct, a more cynical view is that major
labels adopted hip-hop once the independent labels that supported
it throughout the 1980s became a threat to their hegemony in the
field of black music. What was most important was maintaining complete
control over the urban contemporary market. If hip-hop happened
to crossover —so the thinking was in the late 1980s —it
would be simply gravy.
By the mid-1990s hip-hop would of course do so much more, eventually
becoming one of popular music's dominant genres. But the germ of
that success came years earlier via a small boutique label distributed
by MCA, the label Brown recorded for. Sean Combs gets much of the
credit for carrying hip-hop over the crossover hump, but before
Bad Boy Entertainment there was Uptown, the brain-child of former
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde frontman Andre Harrell. In the early 1980s
Jekyll and Hyde ('Genius Rap") were known for the business
attire they wore on stage while rapping, a look that captured the
very aesthetic that Harrell hoped to cultivate with the Uptown label,
a style he would call "High Negro", which melded the upscale
blackness of R&B (and the yellow-power-tie/Reagan-era generation
of niggeratti strivers) with the street. Harrell was not necessarily
an innovator; groups like Full Force ("Alice, I Want You Just
for Me") and The Force MDs ("Let Me Love You") were
already charting this territory. But Harrell had the genius to mass
market this sound. Not surprisingly, Heavy D and the Boyz were one
of the label's first successes, the group's "We Got Our Own
Thing", produced by Riley in 1989, became an anthem for the
era of asymmetrical high-top fades, Africa medallions and pastel
colors. But Uptown's two signature acts, Jodeci and Mary J. Blige,
defined the Uptown sound and the possibilities of a true hip-hop
and R&B hybrid.
Jodeci was comprised of two sets of brothers from North Carolina,
Dalvin and Devante Degrate and K.C. and Jo Jo Hailey, who were the
group's primary vocalists. In many ways Jodeci was like a quartet
of Bobby Browns, though none in the group possessed Brown's charisma.
Their deft command of harmonies was a throwback to the classic Soul-man
era, with K.C. Hailey often doing his best imitation of Bobby Womack.
Their debut, Forever My Lady (1991) featured popular hits
such as "Stay", "Come and Talk to Me" and the
title track. What caught the attention of urban audiences was their
gear —thugged out in baggy jeans and Timbaland boots (courtesy
of budding fashion designer Sean Combs) —which helped Jodeci pioneer
a sub-genre that I like to refer to as Thug Soul (Dave Hollister
and Jaheim are the most successful converts). Though the group never
achieved real mainstream appeal, Jodeci became the perfect counterweight
to the popfectionary R&B of Boyz II Men during most of the 1990s.
It would be Jodeci's female counterpart at Uptown, though, who
would ultimately change the game, at once representing the best
of R&B and facilitating its demise. Andre Harrell heard a demo
of Mary J. Blige singing an Anita Baker tune, but was at a loss
as to how to promote her. Blige's big opportunity came when she
recorded a song for Uptown's soundtrack for the 1991 film Strictly
Business. Though it was not released as a single, "You
Remind Me" caught the attention of hip-hop DJs and soon found
its way on the playlists of urban-radio programmers. With a hit
record in hand, Uptown forged ahead with Blige's debut What's the
411? The success of the recording pivoted on the lead single, "Real
Love". Built around the rhythm track of Audio Two's 1987 hip-hop
classic "Top Billin'", "Real Love" was the blueprint
for what Combs would dub "hip-hop soul" —essentially
the marriage of R&B vocals with hip-hop beats and samples, which
by the end of the decade became the standard form of R&B production.
What separated Blige from her peers was that she tapped into the
emotional core of a generation of music fans for whom loss and betrayal
were always the first and foremost expectations, whether in love
or public policy. Hence a song like "Real Love" resonated
very powerfully, because it captured the hip-hop generation's utter
fixation with delineating "the real", its existential
quest for authenticity. Unlike the civil rights generation, which
was often consumed with defending its legitimacy in the face of
an all-too-present white gaze, the hip-hop generation rejected the
significance of the white gaze, defining the real within the context
of black community instead. What is at stake in this quest for the
real is the very real possibility of rejection and censure from
the community. It's a product of the apprehensions and ambivalences
associated with coming of age in an era where you are free to be
whatever. And it was Blige's vocals —ragged, displaced and aching
—that summoned all of these emotions, as she struggled with the
demons of betrayal and abuse in her own life. Blige quickly became
known as hip-hop's Aretha Franklin, not so much for her technical
proficiency but her ability to speak for a generation, much the
way Franklin spoke for the civil rights generation.
What hip-hop soul did was bring the production values of hip-hop
to the R&B world. Combs is notable if only because he was best
positioned to exploit this marriage. By the end of the 1990s others
were doing it much more consistently: Timbaland (in his work with
Aaliyah and Ginuwine), Chucky Thompson, Jermaine Dupri and even
Dr. Dre, who produced one of Blige's biggest hit singles, "Family
Affair" (2001). The use of hip-hop production in R&B created
a wider audience for hip-hop itself, something Combs quickly took
advantage of with Craig Mack, the Notorious B.I.G. and Mase. While
there were artists who had crossed over to the pop mainstream —Run-DMC, the Beasties, NWA and Hammer being the most notable —only after the success of hip-hop soul were popular hip-hop artists
routinely expected to cross-over as well, as has been the case with
Jay Z, Nas, DMX, Ja Rule, Eminem, Nelly, Ludacris, and the rest.
Telling in this regard is the fact that R&B vocalist Ashanti's
breakthrough onto the upper tier of the pop charts, "Foolish",
featured a sample of the Notorious B.I.G.'s "One More Chance
(remix)" (itself built on a sample of DeBarge's "Stay
with Me").
Despite the success of hip-hop soul and purveyors like Blige, Faith
Evans and later Ashanti, the R&B world of the mid-1990s still
allowed for the relatively old-school stylings of Gerald Levert,
Brian McKnight, Keith Sweat and the so-called neo-soul movement,
which was essentially R&B packaged in opposition to hip-hop
soul and marketed to traditional R&B audiences tiring of hip-hop's
urban-radio hegemony. Ironically many neo-soul artists also relied
on the sample-based production that hip-hop initially popularized
(listen to Angie Stone's "Sunshine" and D'Angelo's "Send
It On", which sample Gladys Knight & the Pips and Kool
& the Gang respectively). This moment in R&B would be short
lived, as the massive consolidation within the music and radio industries
would create the context where virtually all forms of urban music
would began the pop-chart paper-chase in pursuit of the new queen:
hip-hop.
Related Stories:
—September 2, 2005
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