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Producer Series: The Underdogs

Thirty-two tracks from the production duo who kept the male R&B ballad alive through the 2000s, and who you now know better from the movies.

The Underdogs: Harvey Mason Jr. and Damon Thomas

The Underdogs are Harvey Mason Jr. and Damon Thomas — a Los Angeles production and songwriting partnership responsible for a remarkable share of the R&B ballads that defined the early 2000s. Mason is the son of the great session drummer Harvey Mason Sr., which shows: their records have a rhythmic sophistication that most ballad production lacks.

Their specialty was the male vocal record — big, unashamed, built for a singer to actually sing. In a period when R&B was fragmenting toward rap features and minimal beats, The Underdogs were making full arrangements with real bass, layered backgrounds and key changes. That commitment is why Tyrese, Avant and Joe had the careers they did.

Mason later moved into film music, producing Dreamgirls, Sing and Pitch Perfect, and eventually became CEO of the Recording Academy — the organisation that runs the Grammys.

What to listen for

The Tyrese material is the core. "How You Gonna Act Like That" is the biggest, and "Signs of Love Makin'" the most characteristic — a slow build with genuine harmonic movement underneath.

Avant's "When It Hurts" and "Kiss Goodbye" show their instinct for a singer's strengths, and Joe's "Priceless" and Brian McKnight's "Stay Or Let It Go" extend the same idea.

Toni Braxton's "He Wasn't Man Enough" is the outlier — up-tempo, sharp-edged, and a Grammy winner. Whitney Houston's "I Look to You" is the most poignant thing here: the title track of her final studio album, written by R. Kelly and produced by the duo, and a record that is difficult to hear now without the weight of what followed.

The TGT tracks — the Tyrese, Ginuwine and Tank supergroup — are the late chapter, and "Anyone Who Had A Heart" pairs Elton John with Luther Vandross on a Bacharach song, which is exactly as good as it sounds.

Go deeper

For the tradition they belong to, Babyface is the obvious ancestor — the same commitment to melody and to letting a singer sing. Rodney Jerkins and Bryan-Michael Cox are the contemporaries.

The Dreamgirls soundtrack is worth revisiting as a Harvey Mason Jr. production job; it is a more interesting record than its origins suggest.

And for the male R&B vocal tradition generally: Luther Vandross, Gerald Levert and Brian McKnight are the three to know. It is a lane that barely exists in mainstream music now, which makes this playlist something of a preservation project.

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