The Bridge: Hip-Hop, Hit Pop

[This edition of my Hit Parade—“The Bridge” bonus series is available to Slate Plus subscribers only. A link to the episode show page is below. To sign up for Plus—and tell Slate that Hit Parade sent you!—visit slate.com/hitparadeplus.]

In this mini-episode of Hit Parade, host Chris Molanphy is joined by Amherst pop-music professor Amy Coddington to provide some context on how Milli Vanilli helped change the sound of pop music at the turn of the ’80s and ’90s. She says Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan—and whoever vocalized for them—made rap more palatable for both adults and kids. From a 2021 vantage point, it seems quaint that music buyers would be outraged and demand a refund for an album not sung by the pretty faces on the cover. But Americans in the late ’80s were still acclimating to post–hip-hop, post-MTV standards of pop.