When these two pairs of brothers—DeVante Swing and Mr. Dalvin, and K-Ci and JoJo—teamed up to release their 1991 debut, Forever My Lady, they were broke preachers’ sons who’d arrived in New York by bus from Charlotte and shared a one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx projects. Scrappy as the foursome was, there was no denying the silky-smooth harmonies and on-point choreography. And someone important took note: Sean “Puffy” Combs, then an up-and-coming talent director at Uptown Records, took the group under his wing. It was Puffy’s influence that shaped the direction of their sophomore record, Diary of a Mad Band, and the bad-boy reputation that surrounded it. (He may have had a say in those neoprene fishing overalls on the cover art, too.)
But there was more to Diary of a Mad Band than flashy style and rock-star antics: Somewhere between heartfelt soul and hip-hop-inspired bounce, it’s a definitive example of how R&B was evolving in the ’90s. “Cry for You” is balladry at its best, so timeless that Drake quotes it more than 20 years later on his “Controlla.” On “Feenin,’” K-Ci and JoJo’s soaring harmonies make the love-as-drugs cliché sound fresh, thanks largely to DeVante’s slick production. Alongside the slow jams, though, were rough-edged cuts like “You Got It,” a rugged street anthem with a verse from Redman. The record even introduced the world to an unknown Virginia rapper by the name of Missy Elliott on “Won’t Waste You,” and to her eccentric go-to collaborator, Timbaland, whose first official production credit arrives on the ultra-funky “In The Meanwhile.” You could argue that modern hip-hop and R&B begins right here: Jodeci may have been a mad band, but they saw straight into the future.