Immensely popular from about 1989-1992, it’s a style of R&B that focuses on a very prominent swingbeat made with an electronic drum machine. Vocals are usually harmonized.
New Jack Swing, New Jack, or Swingbeat is a fusion genre evolved in the late ’80s, when urban contemporary soul artists began incorporating hip-hop rhythms, samples, and production techniques into their sound in the urban contemporary sound of R&B. Some songs simply had hip-hop beats, others had rapped sections and sung choruses.
Spearheaded by producers Teddy Riley, Bernard Belle, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, New Jack Swing was most popular from the late 1980s to early 1990s.
New Jack Swing is pop music usually performed by black musicians that combines elements of jazz, funk, rap, and rhythm and blues.
Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary
Digital synthesizers were heavily used, notably the Yamaha DX7, Korg M1, and Roland D-50. New Jack Swing took up the trend of using sampled beats and tunes and created beats using electronic drum machines, such as the SP-1200 sampler and Roland TR-808, to lay an “insistent beat under light melody lines and clearly enunciated vocals.” The Roland TR-808 was sampled to create distinctive, syncopated, swung rhythms, with its snare sound being especially prominent.
Listen the best New Jack Swing music of all time
all / laid-back / funk/soul / new jack swing
all / other mood / other music genre / other funk/soul music
