For anyone new to the name, New Jill Swing (a tongue-in-cheek accompaniment to its New Jack counterpart) was a confection of hip hop and house rhythms grafted onto RnB-driven female-fronted pop, and for a few years it was everywhere until it was gone forever.
This Ace Records comp features key artists who were big names on this as well as the other side of the Atlantic: Sisters With Voices with a Top 20 single from a Top 20 album, Jade with a Top 10 hit, and Karyn White with a single from a Top 20 LP. Shanice, Pebbles and Chantay Savage all had singles chart success, and En Vogue had two Top 10 LPs and three Top 5 singles – all in the UK. The sole British artist here, Monie Love, who like my grandad grew up in Battersea, unlike my grandad moved to the US, signed to Warner Bros. and had nine Top 40 UK singles.
Half of these artists are in contrast relatively unknown, and troubled our charts barely if at all, but the quality of the selection (by noted compilation-monger Bob Stanley; Tony Rounce and Jon Savage were busy) doesn’t waver from beginning to end.
In the early 90s, indie boys with guitars made performatively miserable music on both sides of the pond, while US rap was poised to take a darker, gangsta turn, but listening to New Jill Swing you’ll likely be struck by the positivity and joy of this (mostly) innocent music, effectively a pop sister act alongside its old school & daisy age rap contemporaries.
Highlights include ridiculously catchy tracks from teen sensation Tracie Spencer, the synth string-laden Keisha Jackson, the Art Of Noise-sampling Tara Kemp, and Pebbles‘ horn stab-tastic ‘Giving You The Benefit’.
Shanice‘s majestic ‘I Wanna Give It To You’ was bizarrely neither a single nor included on her ‘best of’ but is here in all its Mary Jane Girls-referencing glory, rescued from third album obscurity.
Xscape channel LL Cool J, En Vogue likewise EPMD, Jade build on Kool and the Gang, while The Good Girls and Ex Girlfriend are just two of many acts sampling James Brown (et al) and other funk/soul/rap classics. As a result while some songs lean towards pure pop, the majority are far funkier, and soaring above them all is an array of incredible full-range vocal performances.
Swingbeat having intersected with the careers of everyone from Janet Jackson to Mariah Carey, Toni Braxton to Mary J Blige, Brandy and Monica, and not forgetting Aaliyah, perhaps inevitably on a British indie label comp you can’t have it all; as far as 80s-into-90s girl groups are concerned the biggest name missing here is TLC (although Nuttin’ Nyce come close to their vibe) and the 1994 cut-off date means there’s nothing from Total, 702, or Destiny’s Child, but by the time the latter arrived R&B had moved on from the eighties/808 sound that prevails here, making this record a very particular time capsule, and luckily for the listener an extremely charming one. In any case, if enough of you buy a copy maybe there’ll be a Volume 2; there’s more where this came from.
New Jill Swing might not suit those who need their music with guitars turned up to 11. But it’s worth bearing in mind that most grrrls don’t begin with Bikini Kill, and that loud women of the 90s and after were far more likely to have been first exposed to and inspired by global hits like Janet Jackson’s ‘Pleasure Principle’, from her coming of age ‘Control’ LP, a huge influence on the sound of this scene.
Pop sociologists tend to pontificate on global political changes to explain the optimism seemingly reflected in the arts and culture of the 80s-90s turn, but it’s never clear how much influence international events have on the lived experience of musicians, in this case mostly African-American, perpetually braced to weather the ups and downs of the economy. It seems to me much more likely that the spirit you hear on these songs reflects the flowering of a new generation of producers, embracing new technology, supported by an expanding music media, and fronted by a mostly fresh, often very young pool of vocal talent. Maybe they sound like they’re having the time of their lives because they just are.
A pop compilation, then, but in most cases these aren’t really pop artists. These musicians were raised on gospel, soul, RnB and jazz: Coco from SWV later pursued a gospel career while Miki Howard, daughter of gospel singers, went in a jazz direction. Shanice Wilson and Keisha Jackson’s mums are Crystal and Millie respectively.
The confluence of soul and rap had a huge influence in Britain: on acid jazz, Rhythm King, Soul II Soul, and the Smith & Mighty/Wild Bunch-Massive Attack scene that birthed trip hop, without even going into the hip house influence on rave music, that fed into breakbeat and jungle. What goes around comes around too: Nuttin’ Nyce‘s ‘In My Nature’ samples Soul II Soul’s ‘Back to Life’ to brilliant effect.
This is an irresistible collection of female-fronted, gospel-inflected, RnB-powered pop – with a hell of a lot going on beneath the surface.
Various Artists – New Jill Swing 1988-94 is released 27th September on Ace Records.
