Ronny Jordan was born Robert Laurence Albert Simpson in London on November 29, 1962, the second of seven children of Jamaican parents. His father, Laurence, was a church deacon, and his mother, Anzel, a dressmaker who also served as a pastor. He grew up in Harlesden, in north London, taught himself the ukulele at four and the guitar at eight, and played for his father's congregation. By thirteen he was leading his own band. He took a business degree and worked a string of non-musical jobs while he kept listening: to the jazz guitar tradition of Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, Wes Montgomery and Grant Green, but also to Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Chuck Berry, T-Bone Walker, Parliament and Funkadelic, Tower of Power and the first hip-hop records.

That mixture went into a home-made single, "After Hours," which record companies turned down at first. The climate changed as London DJs, Gilles Peterson and Paul Murphy among them, began pushing hard-bop era jazz at dancefloors and the acid jazz scene took shape. In 1992 Jordan's hip-hop and funk-flavored treatment of the Miles Davis theme "So What" became a club hit, reaching No. 32 in the United Kingdom and No. 38 in France. Island Records signed him, and his debut album, The Antidote, appeared on 4th & Broadway/Island in 1992. AllMusic rated it four and a half stars. A third single from it, "After Hours (The Antidote)," became his first record on the American R&B chart, at No. 51.

In 1993 he joined the Guru project that made his name abroad. Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1, released on May 18, 1993 on Chrysalis, paired the rapper Guru with live jazz players, and Jordan played guitar on the album and co-produced and played on "No Time to Play," a single with the singer Dee C. Lee that reached No. 25 in the United Kingdom. His own second album, The Quiet Revolution (4th & Broadway/Island, 1993), reached No. 48 in Australia and produced the singles "Under Your Spell," "Tinsel Town" and "Come With Me," each of which charted in the UK between 1993 and 1994. It also contained "The Jackal," a track that gained a second life when the actress Allison Janney, playing C. J. Cregg in the 2000 West Wing episode "Six Meetings Before Lunch," lip-synched to it; she repeated the bit on Arsenio Hall's television show in September 2013. He appeared on Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool (1994), a benefit compilation for the Red Hot Organization, and in August 1994 issued Bad Brothers, a six-track mini-album of remixes made in Tokyo with the producer DJ Krush. Light to Dark (4th & Broadway/Island, 1996) followed.

Jordan moved to New York, and Blue Note signed him in 1999. The first album of that deal, A Brighter Day (2000), reached the top 10 of Billboard's jazz albums chart and earned a nomination for Best Contemporary Jazz Album at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards, the award going to Béla Fleck and the Flecktones for Outbound. A remix of the title track featuring the rapper Mos Def reached No. 20 on Billboard's rap songs chart. The same year Jordan won the Best Jazz Act award at the MOBO Awards in London, and in 2001 Gibson Guitar named him its best jazz guitarist. Off the Record (Blue Note, 2001) was his second Blue Note album.

He moved to the N-Coded label for At Last (2003) and After 8 (2004, released November 2). At Ronnie Scott's in London in 2004 his playing recalled Montgomery's warm chording and octave slides and peaked on Grant Green's gospel-blues tune "Sunday Mornin'," the kind of material he had known since childhood. The Rough & The Smooth followed in 2010, the year he played London's Jazz Café with George Benson joining him as a guest. In 2013 he issued a digital project, Straight-Up Street, built mostly from guitar synthesizer with some turntable and programmed drums. A fan-funded plan to turn it into a CD release and tour stalled.

Ronny Jordan passed away on January 13, 2014, at the age of 51. According to a statement from his family, his body was found at home several days after he returned from a tour of South Africa; an autopsy was inconclusive but showed no foul play or injury. His siblings Rickey and Denise announced his death on a Facebook tribute page on January 14, 2014. He was survived by his siblings Rickey, Denise, Faye, Gaynor, Darren and Clive.

Jordan called his music "urban jazz," a blend of jazz, hip-hop and R&B, and the formula held from The Antidote on: punchy funk and hip-hop rhythm sections underneath a clean, lightly struck guitar sound whose warm chord work and smooth octave runs came from Wes Montgomery and whose gospel-blues side showed in tunes such as Grant Green's "Sunday Mornin'." That contrast between hard drums and a soft touch was the center of his best records. The Guardian's obituarist John Fordham placed him among populist crossover figures such as George Benson, Donald Byrd, Roy Ayers and George Duke, and noted that his work could irritate jazz purists while still sounding like nobody else. The remix album Bad Brothers drew the sharpest criticism, with some hearing it as formulaic smooth jazz, while his live shows were widely admired and the Blue Note albums moved toward a broader mix of American, Latin and Asian music. He was self-taught, drew as much on church playing as on jazz records, and held to the belief that jazz could return to pop status. His records sit closer to acid jazz, smooth jazz and R&B-flavored crossover than to straight-ahead playing, and the hip-hop and R&B side of his work was central to his audience.