What's the 411? Review

Everything that followed in the genre for the next fifteen years starts somewhere on this record. The idea sounds obvious now and was not then: take the drum programming and sample logic of New York rap, hand it to a singer with a rough, unschooled, enormous voice, and do not ask her to sound like a jazz vocalist. Puff Daddy and Dave Hall build tracks that are hard and dry, and Blige sings across them slightly behind the beat, cracking on the high notes and using the crack as a device.

Real Love is one of the great singles of the decade, a loop everyone recognises and a hook that never fades. You Remind Me came first and set the tone. Sweet Thing shows she could sing straight if she wanted to and mostly chose not to. The writing is standard early nineties love song material, which is the record's only real limit. The delivery is anything but standard, and the sound of it was genuinely new.