Dru Hill

With its first release, this Baltimore quartet turned New Jack Swing inside out. Instead of R&B vocal harmonies with hip-hop flavor, Dru Hill fronted like a hip-hop outfit before revealing its crushed-velvet soul. The group negotiated its persona through mere sound, balancing the rich and the real for surefire chick-bait. Keith Sweat's production is plush on the cheap, and the singers' homeboy-next-door vocals are always sincere, never intimidatingly professional. The single "Tell Me" went Top 5 and proved that chicks, indeed, digged on the Dru. Enter the Dru continued the streak (still without explaining the band's attachment to martial-arts/mythical-animal imagery), with enough chart oomph to allow Dru member Sisqo to begin releasing solo projects. After the success of Sisqo's summer novelty "The Thong Song," and the relative disappointment of his album sales, Dru Hill regrouped stronger than ever for Dru World Order, folding Sisqo back in and adding sad-eyed Skola, a singer with an expansive gospel vibe. Tamir "Nokio" Ruffin (the "N-Tity") does the production honors, piling on the strings, decelerating the syncopation to a slow tease, and piling the men's voices atop one another like the towering platter of bedroom-cakes they are. If there's a cuter contemporary seduction number than "I Should Be . . . ," Boyz II Men sure didn't record one. (ARION BERGER)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide