Boyz II Men's Evolution
In their six-year career, Boyz II Men have with stood personal tragedy, music industry ineptitude, and the dumbed-down, all-about-the-Benjamins regression of contemporary black music-and still outlasted the competition. Do you know the way to H-Town? Probably not. The cream does rise to the top-and stays there if the stars are aligned in just the right way.
Longevity in music often has as much to do with the backstage abilities of the management team as with the onstage capabilities of the stars. Corporate strategy can be the key that unlocks the doors to more than just the promised land of increased royalty rates and vanity record deals. It can and should lead to a career that allows for creative risk taking after all the bills have been paid.
In other words, when you sell 30 million records, like Boyz II Men have, you should be able to do whatever you please - including working with the best producers and finding the best songs. Which, for the most part, the Philadelphia quartet have done this time on their 3rd album - with simutaneously brilliant and confusing results.
Evolution opens with a bang. "Doin' Just Fine," written by Shawn Stockman, is dazzlingly mature songcraft paired with some of the slyest crooning Boyz II Men have ever done. And for six straight tracks, Boyz II Men top themselves over and over again. The lush, overorchestrated balladry they're famous for has been replaced by a touching subtlety. None of the vocal power is lost; instead, new confidence is gained. No more boyish melodrama. With grace and skill, the Boyz in the band have indeed morphed into Men, and they have the songs to prove it.
Jam and Lewis's pulsatingly percussive "4 Seasons of Loneliness" rivals anything the duo have concocted in their long career and is far better than the weightless stuff they gave Mary J. Blige on her Share My World. "4 Seasons of Loneliness" segues into the achingly beautiful Babyface tune "Girl in the Life Magazine," an ode to the sort of adolescent attraction that often follows us to adulthood. In less assured company, the fragile sentiments of "Girl in the Life Magazine" might have veered off into novelty territory; but here, Boyz II Men find the perfect melancholic tone. "A Song For Mama" is the kind of honorable testament Babyface seems to be able to write in his sleep, but the lilting melody engages and lists the song into the upper stratosphere of the super producer's increasingly expanding repertire.
This six-song suite, which gives the album its heft, is anchored by "Can You Stand the Rain," the Jam and Lewis classic that New Edition made famous on their 1988 boys-to-men breakthrough, Heart Break (and, ironically, the song Boyz II Men sang in their audition for Michael Bivins). Breathtakingly simple in their approach, Stockman, Wanya Morris, Michael McCary, and Nathan Morris do it a cappella, minus the opulent orchestration that has cemented the song in Quiet Storm history. It's a bold, ballsy move. Giving the song's pliant melody front-and-center placement, Boyz II Men seem to be thanking Jam, Lewis, and New Edition for setting the stage for their own success while concurrently staking their own claim as some of the most stylish song interpreters in a long, long time.
Unfortunatley, the album doesn't sustain the passionate momentum that drives the first six songs into classic status. The singing never falters, but the song choices seem questionable. Whose bright idea was it to put Boyz II Men in the studio with Sean "Puffy" Combs? Granted, Puff Daddy has deservedly become the star producer of the moment, but his riffish, loop-heavy style is not at all conducive to Boyz II Men's accessible, free-flowing methodology. Combs will undoubtedly be one of the totems of the late 20th-century popular culture and will sustain his visionary approach to life and style long into the 21st century. But despite his recent songs with folks ranging from Lil' Kim and the Notorious B.I.G. to SWV and Mariah Carey - pop masterpieces all - Puffy is most certainly a remixer, not a songwriter. And Boyz II Men need real songs with which to create their most memorable performances.
Although the background vocals are always stellar-full of coy little moments that remain in the brain long after the record's over-Stockman's and Morris's lead vocals seem lost in all three Puffy-produced tracks, most notably in "Come On," where the melody isn't so much sung as searched for for five long minutes. As fabulous as the chart-topping entities of Boyz II Men and Bad Boy Entertainment are separately, the superstar-producer matchup sadly doesn't really work this time.
Boyz II Men are the best we have at the moment, and are destined only to get better. It's evident in all the choices they make. The bills are already paid. It's creativity that buids greater interest over time. Boyz II Men can sing anything. But they shouldn't sing everything.