I don’t know what you were doing before taking a few minutes to read this but I’m glad you stopped.  After reading this paragraph, go and grab a copy of your favorite LP from the 90s.  It can be a CD or a cassette tape, it doesn’t matter, just grab it.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.

You back?  Good.  What is it?  Don’t tell me.  Unless it is Montell Jordan’s debut album, it is NOT truly representative of the 90s.  You may disagree with that statement, but “This is How We Do It”, the song, alone, defined the 1990s.  This single, the monster it was, came into play in 1995, the debut from virtual one-hit wonder Montell Jordan.  He never really found any success to rival that of his debut single, but everything about it spoke to how magnanimous it would go on to be.  It was Montell Jordan’s first single.  Montell Jordan is 6’8″, which has nothing to do with the quality of the song but it IS interesting.  The single was Def Jam’s first R&B release, and it blended hip-hop, R&B and the oh so popular New Jack Swing all into one perfect piece of musical goodness over a sample of Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story” (which is, itself, built over a sample of Bob James’ “Nautilus”).

And you can point to plenty of things that made this song the success it was, but the more interesting side of the story is how this song, part of the album of the same name, marked the a rebirth of major label disposable artists.  It’s a shame, because Jordan is talented.  He can sing, for the most part, and he’s actually pretty decent as a rapper, at least by mid-90s, “rappa and sanga” standards, but there was nothing else in his repertoire that even came close.

Some people call him a one-hit wonder, as I did in a previous paragraph, but to be fair it would be more accurate to say that “This is How We Do It” is his signature song.  A one hit wonder has one significant song and that’s the end of it.  Jordan was still successful, and he maintained a string of minor hits until 2010 when he left the music business to become a minister.  But again, we come back to how it all started, and I suppose I should say a few more words about the song itself.

New Jack Swing was big at this time, thanks to the antics of Teddy Riley and Bernard Belle.  That brand of boom-bap was an instant rump shaker.  At one point you could argue that the antics of Murray and Aykroyd went so far as to bring it back to life, but it never had to be.  It had its time, its era, but frankly I find it to be dangerous thinking.

See what I did there?  That’s okay: you don’t have to laugh, I know you’re laughing on the inside.  Montell was special because he blended New Jack with hip-hop and R&B in a special way.  If anything, his voice was a fine match for the danceable beat because it was comfortably in the background.  The hook was the hook, no pun intended.  Any club goer, singer, dancer, thug, student, air breathing denizen of the planet Earth was ready to belt out the eternal words anytime it came up.

It was also the subject matter.  “This is How We Do It” was pure party, and one hell of a party too as evidenced by Montell’s flagrant alcohol use, positive neighborhood vibes and lack of gang violence.  Much like Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day” or Dr. Dre’s (and Snoop Dogg’s) “Nuthin’ But a G Thang”, and acting like the antithesis of the Pharcyde’s “Oh Shit”, and perhaps acting as the blueprint for the spirit of Pharrell Williams’ “Happy”, “This is How We Do It” was a good time put into concentrated New Jack Swing.  And I don’t care how much Bobby Brown embodies New Jack Swing, or how much Keith Sweat begs on a track, or if Teddy Riley recreates the magic of “Rump Shaker” (confession: I would be pretty excited for something that recreates the magic of “Rump Shaker”): Montell Jordan caught lightning in a bottle with his debut single, and I can’t begin to think of anyone who can even compare.