Luther Vandross is justly celebrated as a singer's singer. He reinterprets pop and R&B classics masterfully, and his detailed lyrics give his own sleek ballads a lived-in presence, as if Luther was right there on the couch with you and your beloved, dishing out some friendly advice. Dance With My Father — an album released as the R&B giant ails in a New York hospital in a coma — suffers from being a little too down-tempo, and guest spots from the likes of Busta Rhymes and Foxy Brown come off as window dressing rather than true collaboration. A duet with Beyonce Knowles, "The Closer I Get to You," rises above the other cameos, but it's the anguished title track that sets Dance apart. When Vandross asks God to bring back his father, painful and private childhood memories turn a potentially maudlin song into a meditative, deeply personal prayer.

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"