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New jack swing or swingbeat is a fusion genre spearheaded by Teddy Riley which became extremely popular from the late-1980s into the mid-1990s. Its influence, along with hip-hop, seeped into pop culture and was the definitive sound of the inventive Black New York club scene. It fuses the rhythms, samples and production techniques of hip-hop and dance-pop with the urban contemporary sound of R&B. The new jack swing style developed as many previous music styles did, by combining elements of older styles with newer sensibilities. It used R&B style vocals sung over hip hop and dance-pop style influenced instrumentation. The sound of new jack swing comes from the hip hop "swing" beats created by drum machine, and hardware samplers, which was popular during the golden age of hip hop, with contemporary R&B style singing.
The term "new jack swing" was coined by writer-filmmaker Barry Michael Cooper (screenwriter for the films New Jack City, Above the Rim, and Sugar Hill) in a cover story in the Village Voice titled, Genius", dated October 18, 1988. Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines new jack swing as "pop music usually performed by black musicians that combines elements of traditional jazz, electronica, smooth jazz, funk, rap, and rhythm and blues Encyclopædia Britannica calls it the "most pop-oriented rhythm-and-blues music since 1960s Motown", since its "performers were unabashed entertainers, free of artistic pretensions; its songwriters and producers were commercial professionals." New jack swing did not take up the trend of using sampled beats, and instead created beats using the then-new SP-1200 and Roland 808 drum machines to lay an "insistent beat under light melody lines and clearly enunciated vocals." Encyclopædia Britannica states that the "key producers" were Babyface and Teddy Riley.
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