Aiming for longevity and unsullied reputations in a business where both are hard to come by, Boyz II Men are doing everything in their power to make all the right moves.
WU: Okay, you once said an interviewer that you guys just wanted people to treat you as regular people.
Shawn: It's hard to make that kind of statement, though, and it's hard to even think that people will accept it that way, only because they haven't known you until you got on this level...they didn't know you back then. Even though we're the same people that we were (before), we can't blame
them for treating us this way this is the only way, that they know us. They don't know us deep down and personal the way tat we were then, and still the way that we are now because of TV, and what we do covers up the person. That's what we try to get into now when we do interviews, to have the interviewer get up close and personal with us, you know, what we like to do at home, what channels yu watch, I mean, all kinds of up-close things to make the people feel that we are a part of them, that we're not just guys who go on TV, these mega-stars that they can't touch and be a part of, because that's a facade that we're just not interested in. I mean, we wanna get offstage and go to the 'hood and say, 'Yo, did you like that? How was it? Was it cool?'
We don't wanna be, like, sittin' on a throne and be, like, (imitating a bass voice for emphasis) 'Yeah, homie-let's see what they're gonna do now.' I mean, we're just not those kinds of people. We like to be up close and personal all of the time.
WU: All right, Nate, this is for you...now you just said that you didn't really realize how many awards and how many things that you guys have accomplished to date.
Nate: It's like, you know, the last three years had went by so quickly that...
WU: (Surprised) It's been three years already?
Nate: Yeah (Laughs)...It's like, you know, everything started speeding up right after we won the NAACP (Image) Awards, the first award that we ever won. As soon as that happened, everything just flew by so quickly, I mean, there was, like, one here, one there, fly here to get this one, fly here to get that one-and it's, like, you know, we were, basically, not saying that we weren't concentrating on awards or thinking about them, but we were, basically, focusing on keeping the group where it needed to be, you know, getting here to perform there, and just getting (more deeply involved) in the group. I mean, the awards and everything were great, but now when you sit back and (think about it)...even when you go home and look at them, you don't really pay that much attention to them, but you hear someone on the television or the radio saying, 'thank you' and they won two Grammys and four Soul Train Awards, and three American Music (Awards), and you're sitting around saying, 'Wow', you run upstairs and look around in your closet and you're like 'I do have those in here!' It's, like, you don't even think about it because that's the big aspect of what we do, but, I mean, everything goes by so quicky that you don't really have a chance to think about it.
WU: Well, on you that you've accomplished so much, does it hand you in terms of what your objectives are?
Shawn: I guess that I can speak for all us. I mean, sometimes we could be just sitting around, and it instantly takes us back to maybe the age of five to seven years old, to where you think of where you used to live or where you came from or your family enviroment. It's just like when you see things that happen today, you just instantly go backwards to where you think, like, 'Wow, why did all of this happen to me?' Sometimes it makes you teary-eyed too because it could be for other people, it didn't have to be us. And it makes you think, you know, you sit back and you say, 'Why did the Good Lord bless us?' And then you look at people who don't have this, and don't have that, and I should never have another worry in life compared to the average individual, considering what I'm blessed with.
WU: But can you still do that? Can you still go back to your own neighborhoods and kick it?
Wanya: Sometimes...Some of us are able to go back to our old neighborhoods, being thatsome of the places that some of us grew up at, and people changed about the same time of our changing, so it's, like, some people still accept you in your old neighborhoods, and some people come up and approach you in a different way, like they think that you think that you're better than them, whereas you're trying to kick it in the neighborhood just to show them that you don't think that way. But a lot of people mistake what you're really thinking or they think that you're supposed to be a certain way. They've already projected it in their minds that you're gonna be a certain way, and when you meet them, they don't give you a chance to show them how you really are. So, a lot of our (old) neighborhoods are like that. So some of us get to go home...(Chuckles) Some of us don't.