Get On Up
Jodeci
Jodeci's "Get On Up" is a slice of early-'90s new jack swing curdled into something rawer and hornier, the sound that made the group the bad-boy answer to Boyz II Men's choirboy gloss. Built on a hard, swung drum-machine groove with stabbing keyboard chords and a bassline that struts, the production (DeVanté Swing's signature) keeps everything gritty and church-bred at once. The emotional register is pure seduction with gospel fervor — desire sung as if it were salvation. K-Ci and JoJo Hailey's voices are the centerpiece: scratchy, melismatic, screaming into the rafters one moment and dropping to a husky whisper the next, the kind of unhinged vocal abandon that separated Jodeci from their smoother peers. The lyric is a frank invitation, a come-on with no pretense of romance, all body and urgency. Culturally it lives at the hinge where new jack swing was bleeding into hip-hop soul, paving the way for the rougher R&B of the mid-'90s; you can hear Mary J. Blige's whole career being born in this register. It's a bedroom record, a sweat-and-grind slow-burner for the back end of a party, the sound of secular gospel that refuses to apologize for wanting what it wants.
medium
1990s
raw, gritty
United States
R&B. New Jack Swing / Hip-hop soul. seductive, raw. Holds a single note of unabashed physical desire from first bar to last, swinging between gospel fervor and bedroom whisper. energy 7. medium. danceability 7. valence 7. vocals: scratchy, melismatic, screaming-to-whisper, gospel-bred, unhinged. production: swung drum machine, stabbing keyboard chords, strutting bassline, gritty, church-inflected. texture: raw, gritty. acousticness 1. era: 1990s. United States. The back end of a party, a sweat-and-grind slow-burner for the late hours.