This Is How We Do It

This Is How We Do It — Montell Jordan

A Voice Arriving from Nowhere

The spring of 1995 was saturated with R&B, and most of it followed predictable templates: lush orchestration, carefully choreographed videos, polished vocal acrobatics designed to signal technical mastery. Then a six-foot-eight newcomer from Los Angeles named Montell Jordan appeared on the radio with something looser and more celebratory, a party record that announced its intentions in the first seconds and never let up. "This Is How We Do It" sounded like a Saturday night in your best outfit before anything in particular had gone wrong, and that feeling made it nearly impossible to resist. The track hit radio like a relief valve, releasing something that weeks of more self-consciously serious R&B had built up without quite delivering.

The Making of a Debut Anthem

Jordan had grown up in Los Angeles and sang in church before transitioning to secular music. The track was produced by Oji Pierce and written by Jordan himself, and it drew from old-school West Coast R&B while packaging that sound in a distinctly mid-90s production style. The bass sat deep, the groove was unhurried, and Jordan's voice moved through the track with a confidence that belied his status as an unknown quantity. The song sampled elements from earlier recordings, giving it an additional layer of authenticity for listeners steeped in the culture while remaining fully accessible to pop radio audiences who had no frame of reference for the source material.

One of the Great Chart Climbs

"This Is How We Do It" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on February 25, 1995, entering at a modest number 93. What followed was one of the most impressive climbs of that chart year. Week by week the song moved upward: from 93 to 54, then to 34, then to 20, then to 16. It reached number 1 on April 15, 1995, having taken roughly seven weeks to go from the bottom of the chart to the top. That arc told the story of a record that built through genuine radio and consumer response rather than being pushed to the peak by a marketing blitz. It stayed on the chart for 29 weeks, an extraordinary run that confirmed it had moved from hit to cultural fixture. Few debuts in 1990s R&B could claim that kind of sustained commercial presence.

Cultural Weight in the Mid-90s

The song landed at a moment when Black Los Angeles culture was particularly visible in American popular music. It captured something specific about the weekend rituals, the social hierarchies, and the pleasures of young Black life in the city in a way that felt accurate rather than performed. Music videos played a significant role in amplifying this: the clip showed Jordan and his community having an unreservedly good time, and that image resonated with an audience that didn't always see its own experience reflected in mainstream entertainment. The song became a touchstone for an entire cohort of listeners coming of age in the mid-1990s, a record that seemed to understand their world from the inside rather than describing it from a comfortable remove.

Debut, Legacy, and Staying Power

The single announced Jordan's arrival and drove the success of his debut album, also titled This Is How We Do It. Despite the enormous commercial success of the song, Jordan's career followed a path that proved difficult to sustain at that level, a common challenge for artists whose debut single defines the cultural moment so completely that follow-ups face nearly impossible comparisons. The track itself, though, never stopped being played. Decades of use in films, television, and sports arenas have kept it circulating constantly. The YouTube video has accumulated over 67 million views, and the number climbs steadily as new generations encounter the song through cultural osmosis and older fans return to it with the pleasure of recognition.

Put it on and notice how quickly the room changes temperature. That's the whole trick.

"This Is How We Do It" — Montell Jordan's singular moment on the 1990s charts.