"Those Things", one of The Past’s best tracks, begins in that classic territory before rapid-fire kick drums and snares and a warped synth offer a genius update: New jack swing for a post-trap world, courtesy of former protégé Timbaland, who produces the track as well as "Incredible". It’s a fans-first album that certainly won’t be played outside of urban radio formats-but then, it's rare to hear anything as assuredly black as Jodeci’s pristine, four-part harmonies and celestial new jack swing outside those formats anymore anyway. So, like the second single "Every Moment" hinted, this is another record of silky, pro-forma bedroom soul a classic, if slightly tame Jodeci record, with no real aesthetic challenges or age-inappropriate shifts in style.
In some ways, the 'Bad Boys of R&B' tagline was just a foil: Jodeci, led by producer/singer DeVante Swing, remains a group of soul classicists, thematically inspired by the intimacy and lewdness of sex and buttressed by the aesthetic and energy of hip-hop.
So, what’s on the agenda for The Past, the Present, the Future? (The foursome was truly a marquee act on this front-check out this safe sex PSA from 1995.) Twenty years on from their third album The Show, the After Party, the Hotel, Jodeci’s returned to a hip-hop and R&B landscape that’s more sexually liberated than ever before. Until Jodeci unlocked the swag, R&B singers were often blazer-and-sweater wearing singers, rarely approaching the energy and aesthetic of a rapper. Dalvin hadn’t stomped and writhed all over R&B, opening up a new, sex-positive lane for male rappers and singers. There would be no Chris Brown or PARTYNEXTDOOR if DeVante Swing, K-Ci, JoJo and Mr. In the case of Jodeci, the news was more encouraging: more than just a nostalgia act, the groundbreaking '90s R&B group were one of the original purveyors of male ratchet. It’s not always fun to watch storied musicians prepare a comeback after years, or even decades, out of the limelight.
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