* Soul to soul: The Jones Girls toured as background singers for Diana Ross. Their ballad “Who Can I Run To?” was covered by Jermaine Dupri’s girl group Xscape in 1995, and the pulsing “You Gonna Make Me Love Somebody Else” was sampled by rapper Foxy Brown in 1997.

* The lowdown: What sets this family trio apart from other sister acts of the time — the Emotions, the Pointer Sisters, Sister Sledge — is the edginess of their material. “You Gonna Make Me Love Somebody Else” serves up streetwise, dance-floor-friendly feminism. “Nights Over Egypt” paints a lush, Afrocentric fantasia. And “Children of the Night,” which was written as a first-person account of gay male cruising, is a knowing anthem for anyone who’s ever felt alienated and alone. “I walk the streets until I find / Someone who is just like me,” they sing in crystalline three-part harmonies that function as the lovely medium for their bold messages.