The 1990s File Feature
These Are The Times
These Are The Times: Dru Hill's Gospel-Soaked Farewell to 1998 Baltimore's Finest, Riding the Peak of Their Powers Think back to late 1998 and the emotional …
01 The Story
These Are The Times: Dru Hill's Gospel-Soaked Farewell to 1998
Baltimore's Finest, Riding the Peak of Their Powers
Think back to late 1998 and the emotional landscape of R&B at that particular moment. The genre was saturated with talent: male vocal groups singing with precision and power that would have been inconceivable a decade earlier. Among that crowded field, Dru Hill from Baltimore stood out for a quality that was harder to manufacture than technical proficiency: they sounded like they meant it. These Are the Times arrived on the Billboard Hot 100 on December 5, 1998 and immediately validated that reputation, climbing from its debut position of 56 with the unhurried confidence of a group that knew exactly what they had.
The Sound of a Song That Felt Like Sunday Morning
Dru Hill had always worn their gospel influences openly. Lead vocalist Sisqo had a voice capable of extraordinary acrobatics, but the group's distinguishing quality was ensemble singing: the way the four members layered and responded to each other, the call-and-response patterns that gave their ballads a churchy texture even when the subject matter was entirely secular. "These Are the Times" leaned into those influences deliberately. The production created a warm, slightly reverent atmosphere that suited the song's sense of reflection and gratitude.
The chart trajectory was steady. The song climbed through the holiday weeks, passing through 51, then 35 as December progressed. The peak came on January 23, 1999, when the song reached number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100. The total run of 21 weeks demonstrated that the audience for this kind of emotionally substantive R&B ballad was real and loyal. Dru Hill had delivered similar chart performances before, but "These Are the Times" felt like a summation of something, a statement of artistic purpose at a moment when they were at full creative confidence.
A Group at Full Strength
By the time this single reached the charts, Dru Hill had established themselves through their self-titled debut album and a series of singles that showcased their versatility across slow jams, midtempos, and ballads. Sisqo, Nokio, Jazz, and Woody had developed a group cohesion that allowed each voice its own space while maintaining the ensemble quality that made their harmonies distinctive. What separated them from peer groups of the era was harmonic sophistication: they were not simply stacking identical voices at different pitches but building genuine choral arrangements with internal movement.
The group had also shown commercial instincts, understanding that their greatest market was adult R&B listeners who wanted songs of genuine substance. "These Are the Times" delivered that substance, which helped explain why radio programmers continued spinning it well past the initial promotional cycle. The song had staying power because it was built on a foundation that went deeper than surface trend-chasing.
The Legacy of a Song About Gratitude
R&B of the late 1990s produced many records that have aged beautifully because they were built on the bedrock of vocal craft rather than production novelty. "These Are the Times" belongs in that category. The sonic choices that frame it are of their era, but the voices themselves are timeless, and the emotional core of the song remains fully accessible to anyone who encounters it now. Over 152 million YouTube views confirm that the song has maintained its audience across generations, introduced to younger listeners through playlists and soundtracks long after its original chart run ended.
Dru Hill's subsequent trajectory saw them navigate lineup changes and solo projects, with Sisqo eventually having a massive solo hit in 2000. Through all of those developments, "These Are the Times" remained a touchstone, evidence of what the group could do when they were fully aligned and fully committed. Put this one on and feel what late-1990s R&B could do when it was firing on all cylinders.
"These Are The Times" — Dru Hill's singular moment on the 1990s charts.
02 Song Meaning
These Are The Times: What Dru Hill's Ballad Is Really Saying
Gratitude as the Song's Central Impulse
"These Are the Times" is organized around an act of recognition: the narrator looks at the people and connections in their life and feels something approaching reverence for what they have been given. The song does not position itself in a moment of achievement or success in the conventional sense. The gratitude it expresses is not for material accomplishment but for presence, for the simple fact of being loved and of loving in return. The emotional core is the recognition that ordinary moments, shared with the right people, carry the most lasting value.
The Role of Gospel Sensibility
Dru Hill was explicit about their gospel roots from the beginning of their career, and those roots shaped how "These Are the Times" is constructed emotionally. The song carries a quality of testimony, of standing before an audience and declaring what has been experienced and what has been learned. In gospel tradition, testimony is not boasting; it is accountability to a truth that feels too large to keep private. The narrator of this song gives voice to gratitude in exactly that spirit: not as personal triumph but as honest response to something received.
The harmonic approach reinforces this. The vocal arrangements build in ways that echo call-and-response structures from church music. The lead voice makes a declaration and the other voices affirm it, creating a communal texture that makes the emotion feel shared rather than individual. For listeners who came from gospel-attending backgrounds, this was deeply familiar; for those who didn't, it communicated something warm and generous without requiring any particular cultural knowledge.
The Relationships the Song Addresses
The song moves between romantic love and a broader sense of human connection without drawing a sharp distinction between the two. The "times" in the title function as a container for multiple kinds of relationship: the specific intimacy of a romantic partner, the warmth of family and friendship, the general texture of a life being lived alongside other people. This expansiveness is part of what made the song connect across different listener demographics. You did not need to be in a relationship to understand what the song was offering; you simply needed to have experienced being genuinely glad someone else existed.
Emotional Timing and Late-1990s Context
The song arrived at the end of a decade that had been, by many accounts, more complicated than its eventual reputation for prosperity suggested. The 1990s in America were marked by genuine cultural anxiety alongside economic growth: racial tensions that the O.J. Simpson trial had made impossible to ignore, political scandals, generational arguments about values and direction. Into this context, a song about simple human gratitude carried a particular weight. It invited listeners to refocus on what was actually present in their lives rather than on the noise of public argument. That invitation landed at exactly the right moment.
Why the Song Retains Its Emotional Force
Ballads that address gratitude run a constant risk of becoming saccharine. "These Are the Times" avoids that failure primarily through the authenticity of Dru Hill's vocal performances. There is nothing manufactured about the emotional commitment on display; the group sings as if they genuinely mean what the words say, and that sincerity carries across decades. Listeners today encounter the song and find the same warmth that 1998 audiences responded to, because the feeling at the center of the track is not era-specific. Gratitude for the people who matter to you is not a sentiment that requires updating. It simply requires singers capable of communicating it honestly, and Dru Hill did exactly that.
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