Inside the Roanoke Civic Center, the full house roars a
rapturous response as the lighs go down and Boyz II Men logo
flashed, Batman-like, on a giant white curtain in front of
the stage. The crowd pumps up the volume even more when
the Boyz' gigantic faces materialize on the curtain like
four Wizards of Oz.
But when the curtain drops, there's no technoical trickery
afoot-just grand, emotional singing. The Boyz' outstanding
voices soar freely and then come together in rich,
intricate harmonies, their hit-fueled set alternating
between lush romantic ballads and up-tempo, hip-hop-tinged
songs. It's a formula-the Boyz define it as "not to hard,
not too soft"-that in the past four years has restarted the
vocal group tradition that some folks had been talking
about in the past tense.
"They came just in time," says Donnie Simpson, the WPGC
D-Jay and host of BET's Video Soul. In the early '90's
Simpson points out, "rap was huge, and I remember a lot of
artists coming through talking about how it wasn't about
singing anymore, that kids didn't care how good the vocals
were as long as the bass was booming and the car was
rocking. All of a sudden, these kids started getting into
real singing - and Boyz II Men had everything to do with that."
And, Simpson suggests, Boyz II Men remains the standard against
which new vocal acts can be measured.
"When they came on Video Soul, they did an a capella
'It's so Hard to say Goodbye to Yesterday,' and after that,
every group that came through wanted to sing a capella,"
Simpson recalls wit a chuckle. "But not everyone can do
that - it's a heck of a test and if you can't do it, you're in
real trouble. And after hearing some of them, I felt like
saying, 'You really shouldn't do that unless you can come
like Boyz II Men.'"
Truth is, many have come, but none have matched wither the
quality or the quanity associated with Boyz II Men. Their II
album, released late August, has sold more than 8 million
copies - that's 1 million more than their 1991 debut,
Cooleyhighaharmony, previously the biggest-sellng album
ever by an R&B group.
The Boyz have also wreaked havoc on pop history with their
rich ballads "End of the Road" spent 13 weeks atop the
Billboard singles charts, besting the 35-year-old record
Elvis Presley acheived with a two-sided single ("Don't Be
Cruel/Hound Dog"). When Whitney Houston subsequently spent
14 weeks at No. 1 with "I Will Always Love You," the Boyz
came back for a 14-week run of their own with "I'll Make
Love to You," and the group then succeeded itself at No. 1
with "On Bended Knee." The only other folks to do that?
Elvis and the Beatles.
All this explains why they are headlining the Budweiser
Superfest Tour, which comes to RFK Stadium on Saturday (the
line-up includes Mary J. Blige, TLC, Montell Jordan, Patti
LaBelle, and Maze).
Simpson recently caught the show in Los Angeles. When he
visited the Boyz in their dressing room, "the said, 'Hey,
Donnie, we wre just talking about you and how we got our
start on your show....Just thinking about where we are now,
sometimes we feel like we don't deserve it.'"
"It was just mind-blowing to me," says Simpson, "that with
all that has happened to them, that they were still
reflecting on that."
Boyz II Men arrived in 1991, straight outta Philadelphia's High
School for the Creative and Performing Arts. They had come
to the magnet school from four different neighborhoods:
Shawn "Slim" Stockman, from Southwest Philly, Michael
"Bass" McCary from Logan, Nathan "Alex Vanderpool" Morris
from East Philly, and Wanya "Squirt" Morris from the
Richard Allen Projects. Some neighborhoods were better,
some worse, but at school, common enthuasiam for vocal
groups like Take 6 and New Edition proved a crucial
bond.
Once known as Unique Attraction, the four youngsters
impressed fromer New Edition member Michael Bivins with a
backstage rendition of that group's manager and they became
Boyz II Men, taking the name of another New Edition song.
They adapted a particular look-collegiate-and dressed as
harmoniously as they sang, connecting to a gloried past
that ran from the Ink Spots to the Temptations. They sang
about the ups and downs of relatonships, rather than the
ins and outs that obsees so many of today's young sisters.
The lyrics showed respect and appreciation for women.
Radio immeditely fell in love with the Boyz' retro charm,
and Motown sarted shipping their albums by the trainload.
All those hallway harmonies paid off onstage as well: Boyz II Men
are the only black act to make Pollstar's midyear list of
top-grossing tours (at No. 4 with $22 million).
"Positive attitude and image have paid off for them in a
positive way," says Jamie Foster Brown, publisher of the
Washington-based black entertainment magazine Sister 2
Sister, Brown first saw the Boyz at a 1991 Motown
new-talent showcase, and she echoes others observations
about a group that has somehow kept itself level-headed and
scandal-free despite the inevitable temptation of sudden
and spectacular success.
"If anything, they have become 'gooder' since their fame,
whereas so many others have gotten kind of buck wild," says
Brown.
Even the Boyz' attempts at onstage sensuality seem tempered
by their character. Their vocals are far more convincing
than their aerobic gyrations, which come across more as
tummy tighters, and teir earnest steps will never remind
anyone of the elegant Temptations, Mike McCary's bass
vocals are in tradition of Barry White and Issac Hayes, but
neither of those old pros ever capped off a solo with a
smile as sweetly sheepish as McCary's. Earlier this year,
the Boyz' concerts included the magic-stlye "levitation" of
a young woman drawn from the auidence, but it came across
as a little risque. The Boyz quickly dropped it because
they knew there were a lot of youngsters at the show.
In this regard, the Boyz are sensitive to the makeup of
their audience and the group's impact on impressionable
fans. This sets them apart from most of their
contemporaries. We would not expect the same restraint
from, say Jodeci.
Donnie Simpson sees the Boyz as a throwback to traditional
values.
"With the amount of negative music that we get, you almost
have to have someone to offset it, and it happens to be
them," says Simpson. "They're so clean and they're the
chosen ones. I'm sure it sometimes puts them in an
uncomfortable position, but it's the one example that
everyone else can hold up and say: This is what you could
be-it's clean and it's very successful as a result of
it.
Diplomatically, Nathan Morris deflects any suggestion that
Boyz II Men are the goody-goody response to anything, particularly
today's musical demon, gangsta rap.
"If you check your history, R&B music has been around
forever and vocal groups have been around forever," says
Morris, "and there's always been some kind of music that's
been rebelious, something that was harder than the norm.
We perform the kind of music that we like to perform.
Rock-and-rollers and rappers perform the kind of music they
like to perform-and we're all a part of the same aura."
Morris, the oldest of the Boyz at 24, won't even be drawn
into comparisons with the myriad vocal groups that have
sprung up in the Boyz' wake.
"We don't look at it or go into it, as a competition," he
insists. "These are artists out there who do what we do,
and they like to do it just as much we do, and we enjoy a
lot of their music. If we're on a tour together, there's a
little more of a friendly rivalry going on, but other than
that, we look at it as 'This is another group that's making
great music.'"
Simpson, on the other hand, has no problem finding a
context for Boyz II Men - or sharing it with them.
"I told them they were the first group I evr felt could
compare to the Temptations," he says. "And me being from
Detroit, that's not easy to give up!
"And I told them they'd be working 30 years from now like
the Temptations and the Four Tops, who make more money now
than they did when they had hit records. Songs like 'On
Bended Knee,' 'I'll Make Love to You,' and 'End of the
Road'-just those three songs alone-are enough to gurantee
them work for as long as they want to work. They'll be
doing Vegas in the year 2020-they will be around that long
and I don't know of any other group out there right now I
could say that about."
Biznessmen
A little over a year ago, Boyz II Men themselves weren't nearly so
confident about their prospects, even after the surprising
success of "Cooleyhighharmony."
"We had people asking us-and there were questions in our
own heads-can we do it again, can this happen again? Are
Boyz II Men a fluke? And for a while, we got caught up with it,"
says Shawn Stockman. "How are we gonna do it again? What
are we gonna do?
"And what we decided," he says, "was to go back to the way
it was when we had no record, and we just wanted to make
good music, or music which we thought was good."
If they'd thought about it, the Boyz probably would have
stopped rehearsing. After all, their first mega-hit, the
double-platinum "End of the Road," was something of a
throwaway. "It was unexpected," admits Nathan Morris, "not
just for the group but for the songwriters. No one knew it
was going to do what it actually did."
Written by Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, the song was a
last-minute addition to the "Boomerang" soundtrack. The
Boyz heard the song one time at Michael Bivin's house,
agreed to do it, went on the road for a few weeks, flew to
Philadelphia on an off-day, recorded "End of the Road" in a
single session and promptly flew back to rejoin the tour.
Elvis never knew what hit him.
"End of the Road" marked the beginning of BoyzIImania and
over the next couple of years, the group toured the world
and collected awards by the boxful, including several NAACP
Image Awards. It's hardly surprising, then, when the Boyz
started working on II, they once again turned to
Babyface, or that he delivered again, not once but twice
("I'll Make Love to You" and "Water Runs Dry," which went
to #2).
They reunited with Dallas Austin, who had done
"Motownphilly" on the Boyz's debut, and this time conjured
"Thank You," a tip of the Boyz' hats to Take 6. For that song, they created the instrumental parts with their voices. Jimmy Jam and Tery Lewis listened to the nealry completed album and contributed the exquisite "On Bended Knee." The Boyz even went back to to their high school choir book for an a capella "Yesterday" ("the only song on our albums that we've ever really rehearsed," says McCary).
"It's all types of music for all types of people," says Nathan Morris. "We like that."
The Boyz had tried to record II in Philadelpjhia but found themselves distracted by the attentions of friends new, old, and imagined. They finally ended up starting the album in Reno, Nev., and then bounced around among Minneapolis, Atlanta, and other cities. That won't be necessary for their next project; they've become Boyz II Biznessmen after opening their own Stonecreek Studio in Gladwyne, a verdant suburbjust outside Philadelphia that is also the home to Teddy Pendergrass and Patti LaBelle.
"It's been a long-term idea within the group," says Nathan Morris, who has always acted as the group's unofficial leader. "A lot of people don't realize that we write about 75 percent of the songs on our albums and it's something we've always done from Day One-it's not something that just popped up.
"A stream runs by the studio," he adds, calling it "a scenic type of envrioment and make music." Besides a 48-track studios (one digital, one analog), Stonecreek includes four individual offices with mini-studios for individual work, but all four Boyz shake their heads vigorously at the prospect of solo careers.
"We'll always have different aspirations as businessmen," says Morris, "and you may see different business ventures by individuals. But as far anything vocally-it will never happen."
Father Figures
If things had gone accoding to plan, the Boyz would be graduating from college right about now. "We were all planning to go after high school," says Morris, "but that's when Boyz II Men took off. But we felt good because there's no better teacher than the music industry itself, and sometimes it's better to learn on the job. We got into this kind of young and learned as went along. We made some right moves and some wrong moves, but we've learned by making the moves ourselves."
And, the Boyz agree, they had good teachers in Bivins and their road manager, Khalil Roundtree. "They taught us the rights and the wrongs," says Morris. Now that they're not in the picture, we've learned enough to take ourselves to te next level."
The Boyz seperated amicably from Bivins when he started his own label in 1993 and chose to focus on that and managing other new acts. According to Stockman, Bivins was "overprotective of us, being that he was in New Edition and knew all the pitfalls, so he kind of kept us away from all that. As things have moved on and as we have grown to be young men, we've had to step out on our own."
That was particularly true after the murder of Roundtree in the midst of a 1992 tour when the Boyz were opening for Hammer. Roundtree was shot while resisting a robbery attempt at the group's hotel in Chicago (the killer is now serving a 14-year sentence). Each of the Boyz had grown up in single-parent homesheaded by women, and Roundtree was clearly a father figure as well as a road manager.
"Khalil was a major influence," says Jamie Foster Brown, "and when they lost him, they realized their morality as well as their blessings. Khalil's death brought them closer, made them stronger, more spiritual."
The group is now managed by former bodyguard Qadree El-Amin (who was shot in the leg when Roundtree was killed) and former business manager John Dukakis, son of the onetime Democratic presidential candidate.
The Boyz are by necessity insulated by layers of gobetweens, and while their families and personal lives are off-limits to the media, they themselves remain down to earth and squeaky clean. There ae no spicy stories about them in either the Philadelphia Inquirer or National Enquirer.
"One tabloid in Europe wrote that we gave up women for a whole year because we wanted to get into Boyz II Men," says Nathan Morris. "It said we didn't want to be a part of them, speak to them, or touch them."
"That was silly," says Shawn Stockman, "but not too many things have been said that are derogatory. There's not really much to say, though it's not like we're hiding anything. We tell everybody what they need to know, but I guess it isn't juicy enough to be in the tabloids."
"At our press confrences," notes Wanya Morris, "we have to say right at the start, 'Any questions?' I guess we're just too boring."
In fact they are deeply bonded add it's not just a matter of vocal harmony.
"We didn't have a real deep history before (coming together in) highschool and that may be why things are the way they are," says Nathan Morris. "We're all growing together in something we never had any idea we'd be into, even though it's something that we always dreamed of being into."
Part of keeping that bond strong is being smart enough to take time off, which the quartet plans to do next year.
"We've never really had a chance to sit back and enjoy what we've done," Nathan Morris points out. "We've taken care of out families, but as far as us four, we've been working hard for the past 4 1/2 years. So we're going to take 1996 off and just go home, sit back for a while and have fun, just be Shawn, Wanya, Nate, and Mike."