Star quality - songwriter, producer Teddy Riley

STAR QUALITY

Producer, songwriter and multi - instrumentalist Teddy Riley (left) dresses like a gangster and writes music with the same street chic. With his youthful good looks, gold Gucci cable draped around his neck, Susan Bennis--Warren Edwards loafers and gleaming BMW, one might mistake Riley, 21, for a young hustler making "crazy" money on a city street corner. He is successful, but it's all perfectly legal. Riley is not only known for playing "dope" keyboards, guitars and several horns, but also for sculpting a personalized street sound via computers and high-tech control boards in the recording studio. This young Harlemite is the new genius on the block whose innovative musical form--call it New Jack Swing--has the record industry and dancers buzzing. Riley's music is a thumping collage of hip-hop, gospel, funk, jazz and classical. It's the sound heard on Bobby Brown's "My Prerogative" and on GUY, the self-titled debut album of Riley's group (which includes the soaring, Baptist-church-trained lead vocals of Aaron Hall, III) and on his upcoming solo album. The New Jack Swing can also be heard on Keith Sweat's Make It Last Forever, or rap vicar Kool Moe Dee's How Ya Like Me Now, two of Riley's many album productions that have gone beyond platinum in less than two years. And then there's Debbie Harry (formerly of Blondie), Stephanie Mills, the Jacksons and Boy George, a few of the many artists who also want to groove to the New Jack Swing. As for "Whether They Like It or Not," the Riley-produced cut on Boy George's big comeback-payback album, Riley had this to say: "Everybody was trying to judge the guy and draw conclusions during the time he was having the drug problem. So I just wrote a tune centered around a person who was a fighter and didn't care what people thought of him." With all the success bestowed on him in such a short period of time, including writing the title track to Spike Lee's upcoming Do the Right Thing, it's hard to believe that Riley doesn't have a swollen head. He doesn't, because, he says, "I may be moving up, but my music will always be rooted in the street."

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