Jodeci

About

Few R&B groups reshaped a decade the way Jodeci did. The Charlotte quartet, made up of DeVanté Swing, Mr. Dalvin, K Ci, and JoJo, built their sound by mixing old school soul with new jack swing and hip hop, a combination that felt genuinely new when their debut Forever My Lady landed in 1991. That record delivered three consecutive Billboard R&B number ones in "Forever My Lady", "Stay", and "Come and Talk to Me", and the two albums that followed kept the momentum going with hits like "Feenin'", "Freek'n You", and "Cry for You". What set Jodeci apart from their R&B contemporaries was their willingness to borrow from gospel and hip hop in ways that felt natural rather than calculated. Their image, rough around the edges with baseball caps and Timberlands, was a deliberate break from the polished look of groups like Boyz II Men. Every album from their classic run went platinum, and Complex later crowned them the greatest R&B group of all time. After a long hiatus they reunited and released their fourth studio album, The Past, the Present, the Future, in 2015.