New Jack Swings Into Toronto Next Week

New Jack Swings Into Toronto Next Week

By Ryan B. Patrick
Pride Entertainment Writer
March 15, 2006

The musical fusion that is “New Jack Swing” may not actually be new anymore, but its impact on today’s urban music can still be felt.
Four of the biggest supergroups of that late 1980’s to mid-nineties era – Guy, Blackstreet, Tony! Toni! Toné! and SWV – have resurfaced for The New Jack Swing reunion tour and will play Mississauga’s Hershey Centre this March 24.
For the uninitiated, New Jack Swing is a crossbreed style of edgy R&B, fused with hip hop “swing” beats. Back in the eighties, commercial radio stations simply refused to play hip hop music, sticking to more safe electrofunk soul (a la Prince) or “Quiet Storm” slow jams, in the vein of Luther Vandross.
Enter New Jack Swing. The smooth-yet-funky sound is largely credited for popularizing the use of soulful and blended vocals, breakbeats and samples that make up so much of today’s Black music.
The music represents a funky, fresh era of high-top fades, single-suspender overalls, multicoloured jeans and “X”-ed out baseball caps.
“The integration of hip hop became revolutionary in the 90s, and the style that emanated from that is the New Jack Swing sound,” says show promoter Keith Baker of UCR2 Communications.
New Jack Swing is responsible for today’s R&B music being so heavily sample-based, and why almost every hip hop song nowadays has an R&B singer on the hook.
“Everywhere the tour has played in the States has been a sellout, and we expect the same up here,” Baker says. “The artists that defined that era were really Bobby Brown and producers like Teddy Riley. It’s a sound that has not been duplicated.”
Indeed, while Bobby Brown was arguably the king of this era, the tour performers are no slouches either. The stacked lineup of Guy, Blackstreet, Tony! Toni! Toné! and SWV reads as a veritable who’s who of the particular era.
Teddy Riley had already created a name for himself by producing records for Heavy D. & The Boyz and Keith Sweat, before forming the groups Guy and Blackstreet.
His signature sound combined synth-heavy melodies, with silky smooth soul music. Guy’s self-titled debut album was an instant smash, producing the R&B hits, “I Like”, “Groove Me”, “Spend the Night” and “Teddy’s Jam”.
At the same time, as the group’s founding member and producer, Riley found himself in strong demand as a songwriter and producer; in 1988, Riley produced Brown’s Don’t Be Cruel – the album that helped New Jack Swing cross over into pop mainstream.
In the 90s, Riley went on to form the group Blackstreet, whose self-titled debut album was certified platinum and spawned three hit singles: “Before I Let You Go”, “Joy” and “Booti Call”.
In 1996, Blackstreet’s sophomore album debuted at number one and remained on the charts for more than 60 weeks. This success was due to a Riley-produced monster hit “No Diggity,” says Baker. Rolling Stone magazine and MTV have deemed the song one of the 100 greatest pop songs.
Tony! Toni! Toné!, formed in 1987 in Oakland, California, enjoyed a number of chart hits and good album sales, for a considerable part of the 90s. Led by the Grammy-nominated Raphael Saadiq, they released the album, The Revival, and became mega-stars, due, in part, to the hit singles, “It Never Rains (In Southern California)” and the club hit, “Feels Good”.
Rounding out the bill is girl group SWV. The group’s debut album, It’s About Time scored a string of top ten R&B and number one pop hits that established them as one of the most popular female groups of the 90s.
With hits like: “I Am So Into You”, “Right Here/Human Nature” – a remix that featured the Michael Jackson hit, “Human Nature” – and “Weak”, the trio of ladies became a commercial force.
UCR2’s Baker has been in promotions since 1988 and notes that the company has come a long way from its first concert (Jeffrey Osborne at Roy Thompson Hall).
Urban music is evolving, Baker says, no doubt helped by new urban radio stations and the internet.
His Toronto-based company (formerly known as UC Entertainment) is evolving as well. The firm is currently expanding its online presence and has grown to include a communications arm dubbed ReKAB2.
The revamped UCR2 has plans to develop an online community, a new media publication and a few other initiatives which Baker says are still under wraps.
“Entertaining and communicating is the new focus…[but] live entertainment is the core of what we want to do,” says Baker.
In the cutthroat world of concert promotions, UCR2 (www.ucr2.com) has managed to carve out a comfortable niche for itself.
The firm has been responsible for bringing acts such as B2K, Bow Wow and Chris Rock to Toronto. But it can be difficult these days to find artists of this caliber in today’s urban music, Baker says. “I have to believe in the entertainer. I won’t just bring up artists to bring them up, as many of the artists that are out there we call one-hit people.”
The exciting thing about the New Jack Swing tour, Baker says, is that it brings out the 25 to 40 demographic, but also the younger crowd as well.
“Very few artists are able to do that right now,” Baker says, noting that the younger set are buying the music now being affectionately known as “old school”.
The New Jack Swing Reunion Tour (www.ucr2.com) happens March 24, at Mississauga’s Hershey Centre. Email info@ucr2.com for information.