page_title: New jack swing
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: New jack swing / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Janet Jackson on Janet Tour
context_page_description: New jack swing or swingbeat is a fusion genre spearheaded by Teddy Riley and Bernard Belle that was popular from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. Its influence, along with hip hop, seeped into pop culture and was the definitive sound of the inventive New York club scene. It fuses the rhythms, samples, and production techniques of hip hop and dance-pop with the urban contemporary sound of R&B. The new jack swing style developed as many previous music styles did, by combining elements of older styles with newer sensibilities. It used R&B style vocals sung over hip hop and dance-pop style influenced instrumentation. The sound of new jack swing comes from the hip hop "swing" beats created by drum machine, and hardware samplers, which were popular during the Golden Age of Hip Hop, with contemporary R&B style singing.
  Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines new jack swing as "pop music usually performed by black musicians that combines elements of jazz, funk, rap, and rhythm and blues".
context_section_description: A collaboration between former members of Minneapolis music group The Time, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and Janet Jackson originated the style that came to be known as new jack swing with Jackson's third studio album, Control (1986). Jam and Lewis used similar influences with hip-hop influenced drums with smoother R&B stylings in the production. Though Jackson had previously been popular in R&B music, Control established her crossover appeal in the popular music market. Musicologist Richard J. Ripani PhD, author of The New Blue Music: Changes in Rhythm & Blues, 1950–1999 (2006), observed that the album was one of the first successful records to influence the rise of new jack swing by creating a fusion of R&B, rap, funk, disco and synthesized percussion. The new jack swing sound is particularly evident in the second single, "Nasty". The success of Control, according to Ripani, bridged the gap between R&B and rap music. He asserts that "since Jackson's album was released in 1986 and was hugely successful, it is not unreasonable to assume that it had at least some impact on the new jack swing creations of Teddy Riley." Mantronix's early records in the mid-1980s also had new jack elements.
  The term "new jack swing" was coined in an October 18, 1987, Village Voice profile of Teddy Riley by Barry Michael Cooper. "New Jack" was a slang term (meaning ~'Johnny-come-lately') used in a song by Grandmaster Caz of the Cold Crush Brothers, and "swing" was intended by Cooper to draw an "analogy between the music played at the speakeasies of F. Scott Fitzgerald's time to the crackhouses of Teddy Riley's time." Teddy Riley's original name for the music was 'sophisticated bubblegum music.'
  The term "new jack swing" describes the sound produced and engineered by R&B/hip hop artist and producer Teddy Riley. Riley is an American R&B and hip hop singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. He led the band Guy in the late 1980s and Blackstreet in the 1990s. Riley said, "I define the term [new jack swing] as a new kid on the block who's swinging it." The defining feature of Riley's music was the introduction of swingbeats, "a rhythmic pattern using offbeat accented 16th note triplets." In an interview with Revolt TV in 2017, Andre Harrell called Riley the inventor of the sound, hailing him "the king of New Jack Swing, because he invented it."
  Music website VH1.com notes that while in the 2000s "hip-hop and R&B are kissing cousins," in the early 1980s, "the two genres were seldom mentioned in the same breath." However, in the late 1980s, "during the era of high-top fades, and parachute pants, producer Teddy Riley and label boss Andre Harrell successfully fused and marketed the two sounds in a sexy, exclamatory music that critics termed new jack swing. It sparked a revolution." Riley stated that before new jack swing, "Rappers and singers didn't want anything to do with one another," because "Singers were soft, rappers were street." Riley's new style blended "sweet melody and big beats." The sensibilities of Riley's fusion of the styles would forever change pop music/hip-hop music pairing and was further popularized with Bad Boy's dominance of the late '90s through much of the same techniques. Riley, a 19-year-old kid from Harlem, quickly became an A-list producer and commanded big fees to add his sound to major artist projects. The aesthetic of the culture also spread to mainstream white audiences through popular groups such as New Kids on the Block.
caption: Janet Jackson's Control, released in 1986, was one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the 1980s.[4]
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