rhythm and blues singer
Personal Information
Born in Los Angeles, California, ca. 1968; son of a bookkeeper and a microfilm administrator; raised in South Central neighborhood; father of one child. Religion: Missionary Baptist.
Education: Pepperdine University, Malibu, California, degree in organization and communication, 1989.
Religion: Missionary Baptist.
Career
R&B vocalist. Performed in classic and contemporary R&B and jazz styles through high school and college; signed to Def Jam label, middle 1990s; released debut album, This Is How We Do It, 1995; album topped both R&B and pop music sales charts; toured with Boyz II Men, 1995; released More ..., 1996; album included song "I Like," included in Eddie Murphy film The Nutty Professor with Jordan himself performing song in film; released Let's Ride, 1998; songwriting and production activities included Deborah Cox hit "Nobody's Supposed to Be Here," 1998; released Get It On ... Tonite, 1999.
Life's Work
Among the pack of sexy, romantic vocalists who brought a new and sharper edge to R&B music in the 1990s, Montell Jordan stands out. With boundless self-confidence and a range of creative skills that included songwriting and production, he parlayed his debut party anthem "This Is How We Do It" into a run of three successful albums, with a fourth due at the end of 1999. "I want to build a musical empire," he told the Los Angeles Times, and few would argue that he lacked the vocal chops, live-performance magnetism, and creative energy to do it.
Jordan was born around 1968 in Los Angeles--he has been reticent about his exact age, but the 1968 date is suggested by People magazine's statement that he was 27 in 1995, and by his college graduation date of 1989. His father was a bookkeeper, and his mother worked for a microfilm company; later Jordan would attribute the atypically positive (for hip-hop-influenced genres) qualities of his lyrics to his having grown up in a two-parent household. Despite the violent culture of the South Central L.A. neighborhood that surrounded him, Jordan was encouraged in creative pursuits. His friends "used to make music or draw," he told People, and he began to play the piano when he was ten. By age 14 he was directing his church choir.
Graduated from Elite Institution
Jordan's route to a streets-oriented musical career was an unusual one: he worked his way through college, graduated with a degree in organization and communication from posh Pepperdine University in the Malibu Hills, worked for an advertising agency, and contemplated going to law school. "A lot of people don't think you can work your way out of the 'hood, let alone go to a college," Jordan told the Los Angeles Times. "That's the kind of thinking that keeps black people buried in the ghetto. But nobody was going to bury me," he continued.
A commanding figure at six feet, eight inches tall, Jordan tried to get noticed as a singer all through high school and college, where he sang with a jazz chorus and was part of a circle of friends interested in classic R&B. His musical efforts went nowhere, but during his years at Pepperdine he made a valuable ally: John Singleton. The Boyz 'N the Hood film director belonged to the same national fraternity as Jordan, and convinced executives at the hip-hop-oriented Def Jam label to listen to Jordan's music. Jordan's tape found its way to pioneering hip-hop executive Russell Simmons.
Simmons heard something new in Jordan; the Boston Herald called the new quality "a blend of romantic [r] & [b] crooning with a fluid, street-rapping style." Jordan himself explained to the Los Angeles Times that "I wrote rap lyrics, and instead of rapping I sang the lyrics," and he expressed admiration for such classic R&B acts as the Spinners, Isaac Hayes, and Teddy Pendergrass. He was also impressed by the image of South Central that came through in Jordan's music: the genial party-oriented and romantic lyrics of his songs stood in sharp contrast to the gunfire-riddled bleakness of Jordan's West Coast rap contemporaries.
Debut Album Topped Charts
Jordan was signed to Def Jam and released his debut album, This Is How We Do It, in 1995. Its title single spent the better part of two months atop Billboard magazine's R&B chart, and crossed over to notch two weeks atop the magazine's pop Hot 100, the first Def Jam release to do so. As he would on subsequent releases, Jordan wrote most of the songs on the album, which cracked the pop Top 20. This Is How We Do It put Jordan's career into an early overdrive. He moved into a swank new Los Angeles apartment and, in the summer of 1995, landed a spot on the tour of the superstar R&B group Boyz II Men.
It was the romantic side of Jordan's personality that came to the forefront with his sophomore album, More ... (1996), and increasingly often he found himself compared with another sensual soul vocalist, Marvin Gaye. Though he faced plenty of competition in the field of romantic but rhythmically sharp R&B from the likes of superstar talents R Kelly and Babyface, Jordan held his own. The album's lead single, "I Like," gained added exposure from its inclusion in the hit Eddie Murphy movie The Nutty Professor, with Jordan himself performing the song, which had been recorded before More ... was completed. The cameo brought Jordan a chance to take his career into the movies; Marlon Wayans (of the Wayans Brothers) offered him a slot in a basketball film called The Sixth Man. But the film would have interrupted work on the rest of the album, and Jordan decided music was more important.
Album Sent to Hair Salons
The demands of being a new father did not dent Jordan's creativity as he prepared to release his third album, 1998's Let's Ride. Featuring both vocal and production contributions from rapper and No Limit CEO, Master P, Jordan continued to aim his bedroom-oriented lyrics at a predominantly female audience. Def Jam sent advance copies of the album to women's hair salons, and Jordan's live concerts recalled the libido-drenched glory days of Gaye and Pendergrass. Let's Ride went gold, and describing the single "When You Get Home," Billboard noted that "the artist is working to steam up some windows with this, one of his best efforts to date."
After More ... was released, Jordan told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that he hoped "to go back in the studio and write some more songs for other people." He did just that, with spectacular results: the recording of Jordan's "Nobody's Supposed to Be Here" by the Canadian songstress Deborah Cox was a smash hit in late 1998 and early 1999, roosting atop Billboard's R&B singles chart for thirteen consecutive weeks. Jordan himself released his fourth album, Get It On ... Tonite, in October of 1999. He remained identified with "This Is How We Do It" more than with any other song--"Meet me when I'm 60 in Vegas, and I'll be singing this same damn song every night," he once told a St. Louis crowd with a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in attendance. But his career seemed ready to flourish for some time before he would retire to nostalgia nightspots.
Works
Selected discography
- This Is How We Do It, PMP/Def Jam, 1995.
- More ..., Def Jam, 1996.
- Let's Ride, Def Jam, 1998.
- Get It On ... Tonite, Def Jam, 1999.
Further Reading
Books
- Larkin, Colin, ed., The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Muze UK, 1998.
- Anchorage Daily News, August 7, 1998, p. H8.
- Billboard, April 29, 1995, p. 16; February 21, 1998, p. 22.
- Boston Herald, July 20, 1995, p. 42.
- Business Wire, January 20, 1999, p. 1.
- Entertainment Weekly, June 2, 1995, p. 55.
- Fort Worth Star-Telegram, July 6, 1999, p. 10.
- Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1995, p. 60.
- People, June 19, 1995, p. 85.
- Richmond Times-Dispatch, October 4, 1996, p. C1.
- St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 29, 1996, p. F5.
- Additional information for this profile was obtained from http://www.allmusic.com.
— James M. Manheim
