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Producer Series: Daryl Simmons

Every great production partnership has a quieter half. Twenty-five tracks arguing that Daryl Simmons was as responsible for the sound of 1990s R&B as anyone with a bigger name.

The third man at LaFace

Daryl Simmons is an Indianapolis-born songwriter and producer who came up alongside Babyface and L.A. Reid and became the essential third element in the operation that produced a decade of R&B. He co-wrote and co-produced across the LaFace roster and beyond, and his fingerprints are on a startling number of records people assume were purely Babyface's work.

His specialty was the mid-tempo relationship song — not the enormous ballad and not the club record, but the one in between, with a groove you could move to and a lyric that actually described something. That is the hardest kind of R&B record to write and the one that ages best.

What to listen for

TLC's "Baby-Baby-Baby" is the biggest thing here — a number two hit that spent weeks near the summit and did an enormous amount to establish the group as more than a novelty act.

The Tevin Campbell tracks are the ones to play for anyone who has forgotten how good he was. "Can We Talk" and "I'm Ready" are both perfectly constructed, and Campbell's voice at that age is genuinely astonishing.

Toni Braxton appears three times with Babyface — "Roller Coaster," "Hurt You," "Take It Back" — and those later collaborations show the partnership still working decades on.

Dru Hill's "The Love We Had (Stays On My Mind)" is a Dells cover and one of the great 1990s vocal group performances. SWV's "You Are My Love," Johnny Gill's "There U Go" and The Whispers' "In the Mood" extend the range.

The Babyface solo material — "For The Cool In You," "Never Keeping Secrets," "Well Alright" — is where you hear the two writers' instincts overlapping most closely.

Go deeper

The LaFace Records story is the wider frame: L.A. Reid and Babyface built a label in Atlanta that produced TLC, Toni Braxton, Usher and OutKast, and effectively moved the centre of gravity in Black American music from New York and Los Angeles to Georgia.

Babyface's Tender Lover and For the Cool in You are the essential albums.

And for the earlier tradition these three were working from: The Deele, the Cincinnati band where Babyface and L.A. Reid met, and before that Gamble & Huff and Holland–Dozier–Holland — the two great writing-and-production teams whose model everyone since has followed.

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