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Return of New Jack Swing


AROIOS

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After the 80's E-Funk/Disco revival in the last decade, it's great to see today's kids picking up New Jack Swing. 31 million views for a NJS ballad in two months, not bad at all.

(I'm keeping my fingers crossed they don't discover Grunge though.)
 

 

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If Teddy Riley isn't getting a billion dollars for them jacking his flavor, he needs to lawyer up.😎

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PD

 

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return."--E. Ahbez "Nature Boy"

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12 minutes ago, ProfD said:

If Teddy Riley isn't getting a billion dollars for them jacking his flavor, he needs to lawyer up.😎


It's a shame his success didn't last longer. NJS had some of the funkiest drum programming ever. The stuff he did for Michael Jackson still sound hip AF even today.

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Like so many styles within a genre of music, New Jack Swing (NJS) was it within R&B from 1986-1996.

 

NJS was replaced by New Jack Soul, Neo-Soul, Timbaland, The Neptunes and others.😎

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PD

 

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return."--E. Ahbez "Nature Boy"

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4 hours ago, ProfD said:

Like son many styles within a genre of music, New Jack Swing (NJS) was it within R&B from 1986-1996.

 

NJS was replaced by New Jack Soul, Neo-Soul, Timbaland, The Neptunes and others.😎


I'm a huge fan of everything from Quiet Storm to Neo-Soul. Was just listening to Teddy Pendergrass' Joy album last night.

Strangely, it felt like a meteor hit earth around 2010-ish and wiped out most R&B artists overnight. Record companies stopped promoting them and went to HipHop full force. I mean what music do people make babies with/to these days?

Thank God we still have Gospel artists to carry the R&B torch forward, otherwise I can only resort to crate-digging and Youtube interviews to reminisce over the good ole days.

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tbh, it just sounds like someone or a group "think-tanked" a catchy name to try and justify a copying of a style or several styles really....wished I'd remained ignorant of this instead of listening to it!

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There is no luck - luck is simply the confluence of circumstance and co-incidence...

 

Time is the final arbiter for all things

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2 hours ago, AROIOS said:

I mean what music do people make babies with/to these days?

Great question because it certainly doesn't exist except in the crates. 

 

Otherwise, I can only imagine folks are making love connections with video games or porn or Trap beats playing in the background. 

2 hours ago, AROIOS said:

Thank God we still have Gospel artists to carry the R&B torch forward, otherwise I can only resort to crate-digging and Youtube interviews to reminisce over the good ole days.

Gospel music incorporates elements of R&B and Hip-Hop too. But, I don't believe it's intended as baby making music. 

 

OTOH, if someone yells out, Lord, I'm comin"....maybe they're listening to Gospel music on the quiet storm.🤣😎

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PD

 

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return."--E. Ahbez "Nature Boy"

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7 hours ago, Jazz+ said:

It never went away in K-pop and J-pop.


It's nuanced.

Just like J-Jazz, J-Pop always followed American Pop in lockstep, which meant tons of great tunes in the 80's and 90's, when Pop production peaked in the US. (The idiotic label "CityPop" which became popular in recent years, is largely just those old school Japanese emulations of American Pop and R&B)

In the late 90's, J-Pop musicality went down the crapper, along with its US counterpart. Although US artists continued to enjoy international stardom, J-Pop artists didn't have the same luck.

 

Historically, K-Pop has lagged behind J-Pop with limited influence outside of the country, while J-Pop acts like Anzen Chitai and Chage & Aska swept across Asia in the 80's and 90's. Ironically, the K-Pop industry picked up the business model pioneered by heavyweight J-Pop agency Johnny & Associates, and started churning out highly formulated groups and idols like an assembly line. The result is what we come to know as "K-Pop" today.

 

What K-Pop managed to do impressively, is to become the tail that wags the dog, in the sense that both J-Pop and K-Pop emulated and often outright copied American Pop. But J-Pop never managed to touch American audience, let along other non-Asian markets, the way K-Pop did.

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6 hours ago, ABECK said:

Never was my bag.  That drum pattern was painfully overused in the early 90s.

It's similar to the DX7 effect.😁

 

Starts out cool. Folks dig it a lot.

 

Can't get enough. Consume too much. 

 

Eventually, hearing the sound of it makes some folks wanna throw up.🤣😎

PD

 

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return."--E. Ahbez "Nature Boy"

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26 minutes ago, ProfD said:

...Eventually, hearing the sound of it makes some folks wanna throw up.🤣😎...


The alleged M1 Slap Bass in Seinfeld did that to me 😆. Turned out decades later it was actually some layered custom samples.

 

FM Brass is another poor sound that should have been outlawed from the get-go. With all the beautiful analog synth brass sounds that came before, why on earth would anyone use that wimpy toy-ish FM brass in professional settings?

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Funnily enough, there’s a new New Jack Swing thread on Gearspace as well. I’ve always dug it. I’ve been recently feeling very nostalgic for that whole early to mid 90’s sound as well (not just this). 

 

https://gearspace.com/board/electronic-music-instruments-and-electronic-music-production/1434976-new-jack-swing-sounds-techniques-technology-era-troop-spread-my-wings.html

 

And if Riley was the architect, Jam & Lewis were definitely the disciples! Although they did their own thing on Janet’s albums as well, which could be considered NJS. 

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4 hours ago, tapes said:

Funnily enough, there’s a new New Jack Swing thread on Gearspace as well...

 

...And if Riley was the architect, Jam & Lewis were definitely the disciples! Although they did their own thing on Janet’s albums as well, which could be considered NJS. 


That GS thread is great. I'm discovering some nice tunes for the first time from it.

And yes, Jam & Lewis definitely had their own spin of NJS, along with many prominent R&B producers at the time like LA Reid and Babyface. Even Jeff Lorber was producing NJS tunes at its peak.
 

 

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5 hours ago, AROIOS said:

FM Brass is another poor sound that should have been outlawed from the get-go. With all the beautiful analog synth brass sounds that came before, why on earth would anyone use that wimpy toy-ish FM brass in professional settings?

I know you're already aware of the history but for any kddies lurking....

 

Back in the 1980s. The DX7 weighed 32 lbs. A facsimile of every sound required to cover a gig was onboard. Stable tuning. No maintenance required. 

 

It seemed like overnight, every gigging KB rig shrunk like the kids.

 

The electromechanicals KBs and poly synths were shelved in favor of the brown turd, er, classic DX7 and later the DX7II.

 

Musicians, composers and producers went crazy with FM sounds.

 

Seems every genre of music and radio station were playing songs with that FM sizzle and sheen. You had to be there.🤣

 

As I've admitted right here on the forum, I never got tired of FM and I'll always have a spot for it. Layered of course.😁😎

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PD

 

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return."--E. Ahbez "Nature Boy"

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2 hours ago, ProfD said:

...Musicians, composers and producers went crazy with FM sounds.

 

Seems every genre of music and radio station were playing songs with that FM sizzle and sheen...


Yup, sizzle and sheen, that's FM's forte. EP, bells, mallets, bouncy bass... those grounds are all well covered. For pads, string, brass etc, I've always fallen back on subtractive sounds. In theory, FM should be totally capable of handling those sounds; in reality, I can't remember coming across a single delicious FM sound in those categories.

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Nothing like analog for big lush pads, and nothing like FM for cutting through them like a laser beam!

 

As this is a New Jack Swing thread, I'm going to shout out to my friends in Kyros who put out a spectacularly over-the-top NJS-meets-80s-prog track earlier this year. It features ALL THE SYNTHS. Enjoy!

 

https://youtu.be/rNy9MGu6Fhg?si=rZEn_Z0wWn3nLITs

 

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Cephid - Progressive Electro Rock

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23 minutes ago, MorayM said:

...I'm going to shout out to my friends in Kyros who put out a spectacularly over-the-top NJS-meets-80s-prog track earlier this year. It features ALL THE SYNTHS. Enjoy!


Thanks for the share, that tune is DOPE! Kyros should do a collab. with Nate Williams, another British musician with great taste and a ton of soul.
 


 

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