New Jack

New Jack emerged in the late 1980s as rap's audience began to widen and its influence extended to other forms of music. R&B singers, particularly Guy member Teddy Riley, took notice of the genre's popularity and placed hip-hop's beats and rhythms beneath traditional Soul vocals. This new, street-savvy form of R&B, often littered with raps and always slickly produced, gained immense popularity with the success of New Jack adherents Bobby Brown and Bell Biv DeVoe (all alums of teen Pop act New Edition). By the early '90s, New Jack had become the dominant force in R&B, and as such, the narrow term no longer applied. Although the same production methods frequently appear in modern-day R&B, today's slightly updated New Jack is known simply as Contemporary R&B.