Songfacts®:

• This song completely nailed the sound of 1991: New Jack Swing mixed with a healthy dose of Minneapolis funk and a little rap in the bridge. It's blatantly about sex, which was also very 1991, a year when songs called "People Are Still Having Sex" (LaTour) and "Let's Talk About Sex" (Salt-n-Pepa) were hits. In the song, the "passion" (conveniently spelled out) has taken control of the singer, and he is helpless against its powers.
• Rythm Syndicate was a six-piece R&B/funk band from Connecticut led by their guitarist Carl Sturken and lead singer Evan Rogers. They wrote and produced this song and the band's other material. The group, whose name really was spelled "rythm" instead of "rhythm" until they changed it for their next album (possibly inspiring the storyline in the movie That Thing You Do when the fictional band "The One-ders" decides they're better off as "The Wonders"), was not a one-hit wonder; they hit #13 US about three months later with "Hey Donna." The album Sex, Life & Love followed in 1992 on Impact Records, but the album had none (you can blame Nirvana and gangsta rap for so swiftly antiquating their sound). Sturken and Rogers became very successful producers for other acts, including Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Kelly Clarkson.
  
  Sturken and Rogers' greatest hit, however, was the discovery of Rihanna. A Rythm Syndicate tour brought them to Barbados, where they each met natives they later married. This made Barbados a regular destination for the guys (who are white), and on one such trip Robyn Rihanna Fenty and two of her friends auditioned for Evan, who called back Robyn, but not her friends, and asked her to come to America and work with him and Carl. Robyn took the offer and stayed with Evan and his wife while she rehearsed. By the time Carl and Evan took her to Def Jam Records for a looksie, she was so promising that Jay-Z signed her that night.
• Before forming Rythm Syndicate, Evan Rogers released two solo albums that Carl Sturken also worked on. Both flopped, but around the same time they released the second one, the album they wrote and produced for Donny Osmond took off along with the single "Soldier Of Love." They focused on writing for other artists, but hit a rough patch.
  
  "We tried and we miserably failed about five times in a row to write another 'Soldier Of Love," Sturken said in a Songfacts interview. "So that was a lesson we learned: Just try to write a hit song. Don't try to imitate something you did before."
  
  They had a successful run with Rythm Syndicate, but burned out on touring went back to writing for others. They landed a minor hit with "Losin' Myself" for Debbie Gibson in 1993, and a major hit with "God Must Have Spent A Little More Time On You" for 'N Sync in 1998.