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Jagged Edge VibeZ

Nineteen tracks from an Atlanta quartet built around twin brothers, who made some of the most durable R&B of the early 2000s.

Jagged Edge

 

 

OneLove

Jagged Edge

Jagged Edge were Brian and Brandon Casey — identical twins who wrote most of the material — with Kyle Norman and Richard Wingo, signed to Jermaine Dupri's So So Def in Atlanta.

What they did better than their contemporaries was harmony. Four singers, all capable of leading, arranged so that the lead line moves between them within a verse. That is an old technique from doo-wop and gospel quartets, and in the late nineties almost nobody was bothering with it.

They were also unusually good at a specific register: the apology record, the commitment record, the argument-in-a-relationship record. Their biggest hit is literally a marriage proposal.

What to listen for

"Let's Get Married" is the enormous one — and the remix with Run from Run-DMC officiating became the version most people know. It has been a wedding staple for twenty-five years.

"Where the Party At?" with Nelly on the original is the uptempo peak and one of the defining Atlanta records of 2001.

"Promise" is the best-sung thing here and the one that shows the harmony arrangement most clearly.

"I Gotta Be" is the early hit and the most musically interesting — the chord sequence is considerably odder than the genre usually allowed.

"Wednesday Lover" is the deep cut with the best title, and "Lay You Down" and "Without You" are the ballads.

"Walked Outta Heaven" aside, "Trying To Find The Words" is the most emotionally exposed track on the list.

"Put A Little Umph In It" with Ashanti is the collaboration, and "Space Ship" is the strangest thing they recorded.

Go deeper

J.E. Heartbreak (2000) is the album and one of the most consistent R&B records of its year.

The So So Def story is the wider context — Jermaine Dupri, Xscape, Da Brat, Bow Wow — and for the vocal-group tradition they belong to: Dru Hill, 112 and Jodeci, the last of whom invented the register all of them were working in.

Listening note: follow the lead line and it keeps changing singers. All four could carry a song, and the arrangements pass the melody between them within a verse — an old gospel-quartet technique that almost nobody in late-nineties R&B was still bothering with, and the reason these records still sound like a group rather than a soloist with support.

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