After I created the Jam Slow mixtape, I was thoroughly impressed with how it turned out. Thus, I wanted to do it again. However, because Jam Slow had all of my favorite slow jams from that time and place on it already, the second one would have all the secondary tracks. And it turned out horribly. Jam2Slow was the worst slow jams mixtape ever created. I think I listened to it back once and then tossed it aside. Sometimes, I’ll hear songs that were on that mixtape and have to turn them off because it reminds me of Jam2Slow. Maybe my favorite on that tape was a song called It’s Over Now by a young man named Danny Boy. Danny Boy was actually on team Death Row and was the hook singer on Tupac’s I Ain’t Mad Atcha and Toss It Up. It was a rather boring song, but Babyface wrote it and Danny Boy had a pretty decent voice. I wonder what Danny Boy is doing today. He does have a MySpace page if anyone is interested. Give Danny Boy some love. You can see him in Pac’s classic video below.

Since Jam2Slow was so bad, I waited a bit and then created the third tape, titled JSlo3 (yes, without the W). It was far better than the second one that I threw away, but still didn’t quite match the first. But there was still good material on it.

JSlow3 (circa 1997)

  1. Dreaming Of You – Selena
  2. My All – Mariah Carey
  3. Cupid – 112
  4. Every Time – Janet Jackson
  5. Never – Boyz II Men
  6. Never Make A Promise – Dru Hill
  7. Don’t Leave Me – Blackstreet
  8. All Cried Out – Allure featuring 112
  9. Nobody Knows – The Tony Rich Project
  10. Doin’ Just Fine – Boyz II Men
  11. Where Are You Now – Janet Jackson
  12. Place Where You Belong – Shai
  13. On Bended Knee – Boyz II Men
  14. I Care ‘Bout You – Milestone
  15. The Beautiful Ones – Mariah Carey
  16. I Just Can’t Stop Loving You – Michael Jackson
  17. All My Life – K-Ci & JoJo

My tastes certainly haven’t changed all that much. Actually, during this time, I was buying a ton of CD singles as I was a poor college student, but would soon enough buy all the albums of the singles that I bought on CD on this set.

  • It was all about the dude R&B groups back then – Boyz II Men, Dru Hill, Blackstreet, Shai.
  • I think I OD’d a bit on the Boyz II Men, but Doin’ Just Fine is still great today.
  • Who was Allure? A group on Mariah Carey’s old imprint who didn’t eventually make it. Though of course, the Lisa Lisa and Full Force version is much better, I bought this single and enjoyed the Allure/112 version.
  • The video to On Bended Knee was fantastic for the cameos featuring the beautiful Lark Voorhies (Lisa Turtle from Saved By The Bell – could Wanya really get her?) and Kim Fields (Tootie! – could Nate really get her?).
  • Who was Milestone? For the movie Soul Food, a fictional R&B group was created (K-Ci and JoJo, and the Edmonds brothers including Babyface) called Milestone and the boys together released a song for the soundtrack.
  • I remember having to cut about half of Mariah’s version of the Prince tune The Beautiful Ones (Mariah’s version featured Dru Hill) because the song was long and I was running short on time. Remember, this was audio tape.
  • All My Life was my favorite song at the time and became “our song”, when Carol (former wife, current best friend) and I started dating. Yikes, that was like 11 years ago.