The Best R&B Albums of the '90s

Uptown gave Sean Combs and Chucky Thompson the board, and they buried Blige's voice in seventies samples instead of new jack drums. My Life rides Roy Ayers' Everybody Loves the Sunshine at a tempo that barely moves, and she sings across the beat rather than on it. A break-up record made while the relationship was still going on, and the high-water mark of hip-hop soul.

Dallas Austin, Organized Noize and Babyface split the board at LaFace, and a group that had debuted in baggy neon came back sounding grown and unbothered. Creep runs on a muted trumpet loop and a hi-hat that never raises its voice, T-Boz's contralto sitting so low in her range it reads as boredom. Spotify renders the title as Crazysexycool.

Timbaland and Missy Elliott were handed a whole album to work with here, and the drum programming stopped resembling anybody else's overnight. One in a Million puts a hiccuping kick under a vocal pitched barely above a whisper, snares landing a fraction off where the ear waits for them. Blackground and Atlantic shared the release; Aaliyah was seventeen.

Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis co-produced at Flyte Tyme for Virgin, and the record went places no platinum pop act was going in 1997 — depression, bisexuality, self-harm. Got 'Til It's Gone loops Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi under a Q-Tip verse and a rhythm that shuffles instead of snapping. Border case: pop budget, R&B rhythm section.

DeVante Swing wrote and produced nearly all of it for Uptown, with Sean Combs credited as A&R on the first record that mattered to his career. Forever My Lady is four church-trained voices over a slow swing beat, K-Ci Hailey shredding the last chorus rather than singing it. New jack swing gave up its polish here and every male group followed.

Andre Harrell's Uptown put a hip-hop A&R man in charge of a soul singer and accidentally invented a format. Real Love is built on the Audio Two break from Top Billin', drums mixed loud enough to bully the vocal, and Blige sings through them rather than over them. Spotify writes the title with a capital T: What's The 411?

Motown put Babyface and the Jimmy Jam–Terry Lewis team on the same record, and the two ballads they wrote ended up replacing each other at number one — I'll Make Love to You held fourteen weeks before On Bended Knee took over. Water Runs Dry is the better song: acoustic guitar, almost no drums, four voices doing a rhythm section's job.

Rodney Jerkins built most of this for Atlantic, and his drums are stiff, digital and nothing like Timbaland's loose swing. The Boy Is Mine puts Brandy and Monica in one room trading lines over a bassline that barely moves, and it held number one for thirteen weeks. The stacked background harmonies are the actual instrument on the album.

Teddy Riley invented new jack swing and then buried it with this one. No Diggity leans on a Bill Withers sample lifted from Grandma's Hands, a stomping half-time beat and Dr. Dre turning up for a verse, while Riley stacks harmonies six deep behind Chauncey Black's lead. The label was Interscope; the feel is somebody's basement.

Brian Alexander Morgan wrote and produced most of it for RCA, and Coko's nasal, gospel-quick lead is why the group still has imitators. Weak holds one chord progression for four minutes and lets the vocal runs do every bit of the moving. Note that the famous Human Nature version of Right Here arrived later as a remix and is not the album cut.

Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy assembled the group by audition and produced the thing themselves for East West. My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It) rides the horn stab from James Brown's The Payback while four singers trade leads in the same bar. Four-part harmony arranged like a vocal group from 1962, sitting on drums from 1992.

Three musicians who played their own parts — Raphael Saadiq on bass, D'Wayne Wiggins on guitar, Timothy Christian Riley on drums — self-produced this for Wing. Anniversary stretches past seven minutes on a live rhythm section and a bassline that keeps sliding out from under the chord, with no drum machine anywhere near it. The best argument anyone made that '90s R&B could still be a band.

LaFace launched her with Babyface, L.A. Reid and Daryl Simmons writing to the bottom of a contralto most producers would have pitched up. Breathe Again sits her almost in a man's register over strings and a beat that keeps getting out of the way. The Best New Artist Grammy followed in 1994; Spotify lists the debut untitled beyond her name.

Three New Edition members split off and let hip-hop producers rebuild them for MCA, describing the result on the record itself as mentally hip-hop, smoothed out on the R&B tip. Poison, written and produced by Dr. Freeze, hangs a fat bassline over a hard swing pattern and a spoken warning about a girl. The decade opens here.

Timbaland produced almost the whole thing for 550 Music the same year he did Aaliyah's, and it is the cruder and funnier of the two. Pony is a rubber-band bass sound run through a filter, a beat with holes punched in it, and a lyric that leaves nothing whatsoever to interpretation. Male R&B stopped pleading and started leering.

Jermaine Dupri took over from the Bad Boy camp for LaFace and handed a teenager a persona rather than a demo reel. You Make Me Wanna... runs an acoustic guitar figure over a snapping So So Def drum track, and the phrasing that lags behind the beat is the part everyone copied. Spotify capitalises the artist as USHER.

Columbia let her hire Sean Combs, Stevie J, Q-Tip and Missy Elliott, and the whistle register got traded for something breathier and much closer to the microphone. Honey loops Hey DJ by The World's Famous Supreme Team and gives the bridge over to a rap cadence. Border case: a pop star's album made inside an R&B production room.