In 1992, they broke the record set by Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel Hound Dog" single by logging 13 weeks at the top of the pop charts with "End of the Road."
Of course, it wasn't long before Whitney Houston came along and shattered that short-lived distinction with that Dolly Parton cover from The Bodyguard Soundtrack, "I Will Always Love You."
But that didn't keep Boyz II Men down for long.
With the release of their second album, the mysteriously tited II, Philadelphia's new Kings of Soul bounced back and tied Houston's 14-week run with an irresistibly soulful ballad called "I'll Make Love to You." They would have beaten her, too, if they hadn't gone and knocked themselves out of the running with the even better chart-topping doo-wop-flavored follow-up, "On Bended Knee."
The album, by the way, entered the Billboard album charts at No. 1, the first Motown release to pull that stunt since Stevie Wonder's 1976 classic "Songs in the Key of Life."
All things cosidered, Boyz II Men in town tomorrow for a sold-out Star Lake gig, are doing pretty well for a group whose oldest member is now just 24.
And yet, Shawn Stockman, 23, swears they weren't even thinking about superstardom at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts until Michael Bivins of Bell Biv Devoe decided to take them under his wing.
"Our intentions weren't even to really get discovered at first," says Stockman, on confrence call with about a dozen jounalists. "When we were in high school, we just wanted to sing because we liked to sing."
But the four young music majors did get discovered. Their debut album, 1991's Cooleyhighharmony, placed the group at the fore front of the back-to-harmony movement now sweeping R&B.
"I guess you could say that growing up in the area where we're from, we kind of needed an outlet, and music was our outlet," says Wanya Morris, the youngest member of the group at 21. "So we listened to all kinds of music growing up. Our parents listened to the Philadelphia sound, the Motown sound, and we went to the High School for Creative and Performing Arts, which broadened our minds to see that there are other types of music than the music which is on the radio."
Of course, these days, Boyz II Men are the music on the radio.
And they've gotten there with a sound that owes more to the Temptations than Public Enemy or Dr. Dre.
"We can't rap," says Morris. "I mean, that's not our thing, rap. We're singers. It's enough to basically do well just singing."
Recently, at the VH1 Honors, the group had the opportunity to sing "We Are the World" with one of their all-time heroes.
Asked to comment on Jackson's troubled private life, Morris tunrs philosophical.
"People will make things up," he says. "What happens is, people who love the group or the entertainer, they put you on a pedestal. And when something goes wrong, forgetting totally that you're human, they go down on you, you know what I mean?
"It's important that people remember and continue to know that we are human as entertainers. We have attitudes just like they do. We wake up in the morning on the bad side of the bed. We put our socks on wrong, you know what I mean? All kinds of things like that."