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Producer Series: Rodney Jerkins

Eighty-five tracks from a producer who had, for roughly five years, the most recognisable sound in American pop. If it had that drum pattern, it was Darkchild.

Rodney Jerkins

Rodney Jerkins is from Pleasantville, New Jersey, the son of a pastor, and was producing professionally as a teenager — Teddy Riley signed him at fourteen. By his early twenties he was the most in-demand producer in the world.

The Darkchild sound was instantly identifiable: stuttering, syncopated drum programming, hard synth stabs, and an arrangement that leaves sudden gaps where you expect continuity. It was tighter and more aggressive than what came before, and it defined the sound of R&B radio between roughly 1998 and 2003.

He also produced across genres in a way most of his peers did not — the Spice Girls, Michael Jackson, Sam Smith and the Black Eyed Peas all appear here.

What to listen for

Destiny's Child's "Say My Name" is the landmark. Jerkins rebuilt a track the group had already recorded, and the result won two Grammys and became one of the defining records of its decade. Listen to how much silence is in it.

"The Boy Is Mine" with Brandy and Monica is the other monument — thirteen weeks at number one, and a genuinely strange record built almost entirely on restraint.

Whitney Houston's "It's Not Right But It's Okay" is the one that changed her late career, and the Thunderpuss remix of it became a club standard.

Michael Jackson's "You Rock My World" was the last significant single of Jackson's lifetime, and "This Time Around" from HIStory is the earlier collaboration.

Toni Braxton's "He Wasn't Man Enough" won a Grammy, and Jennifer Lopez's "If You Had My Love" launched her music career entirely.

The Joe tracks — "All The Things (Your Man Won't Do)" and "Don't Wanna Be a Player" — are the smoothest, and Sam Smith's Darkchild version of "Stay With Me" is the late one.

Go deeper

Destiny's Child's The Writing's on the Wall (1999) and Brandy's Full Moon (2002) are the two albums where his production is most concentrated. Full Moon in particular is a genuinely experimental R&B record that has aged extremely well.

For the producers he displaced and was displaced by: Teddy Riley before, Timbaland and The Neptunes alongside, and Scott Storch and Tricky Stewart after.

And Brandy's vocal arrangements on those records are worth studying on their own — she is one of the most sophisticated background stackers in the genre's history.

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