Dangerous is a new jack swing, R&B and pop album, which incorporates elements of several other genres, including industrial, funk, hip hop, electronic, gospel, classical, and rock. In a 1992 interview with Ebony magazine, Jackson said, "I wanted to do an album like Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. So that in a thousand years from now, people would still be listening to it." Much of the album contains samples from CDs that Riley had created himself using a variety of instruments.
