Teddy Riley didn’t just make hits. He helped shape the sound of a generation, and now, he’s finally telling the story behind the music, the moments, and the movement he helped create.
The Grammy Award–winning producer and songwriter—widely recognized as a defining architect of modern Black music—will release his memoir, “Remember the Times,” on Feb. 10, offering a personal account of the career that helped reshape R&B, Hip-Hop, and pop music over the past 40 years. The book, published through Simon & Schuster, promises a front-row seat to the sound that carried an era and still echoes in today’s charts.
The memoir takes its name from “Remember the Time,” the Michael Jackson classic Riley co-wrote and co-produced during the singer’s “Dangerous” era. But the title also reads like a mission statement: Riley isn’t just walking readers through hit records. He’s documenting a whole musical shift, from the inside out.
Throughout the book, Riley traces his path from a young musical talent in Harlem to the kind of creator whose fingerprints are all over the mechanics of popular music. The memoir revisits his early experimentation blending hip-hop beats with R&B melodies, an approach that evolved into New Jack Swing and pushed late-20th-century music into a new direction. One where the groove hit harder, the bounce felt fresher, and the culture sounded unmistakably Black.
Written with award-winning biographer Jake Brown, “Remember the Times” also digs into the reality of building a career in a fast-changing music industry. Riley details moments of creative collaboration, professional tension, and perseverance, while recounting the formation of his groups Guy and Blackstreet—chapters that helped define his impact not just as a producer, but as an artist shaping the sound from multiple angles.
And yes, the hits are there.
Riley reflects on the making of influential records like Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative” and Doug E. Fresh’s “The Show,” projects that helped establish new sonic standards and made his signature approach feel bigger than a moment; it became a template.
His story also includes collaborations with some of the most recognizable names in music, including Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, Lady Gaga, and of course Michael Jackson, whose partnership with Riley remains one of the most celebrated of his career.
When the memoir was first announced, Riley framed the book as an act of preservation. “I successfully created the New Jack Swing genre 40 years ago so we could have our own generation of music, not their generation, and our own history,” he told Rolling Stone. “I’m so excited to share that history with my fans around the world.”
Early reactions suggest it’s a ride worth taking. Pharrell Williams praised Riley as “an incredible mixologist of so many different styles,” while Library Journal said longtime fans will be “wildly entertained.” Another outlet noted the memoir’s accessible tone and its wide view of how popular music evolved alongside Riley’s career.
Because when you’ve helped shape the soundtrack of the last 40 years, the final flex is making sure the story gets told right, by the person who built the sound in the first place.
