New Jack Swing

A genre that fuses the rhythms and production techniques of hip hop and dance-pop with the urban contemporary sound of R&B. Its influence, along with hip hop, seeped into pop culture and was the definitive sound of the New York club scene. It took up the trend of using sampled beats and tunes, and created beats using the then-new SP-1200 sampler and the Roland TR-808 drum machine 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. The term “new jack swing” describes the sound produced and engineered by R&B/hip hop artist and producer Teddy Riley, who introduced swingbeats, a rhythmic pattern using off-beat, accented 16th-note triplets. 1985–1995.