Scheduled at the Essence Music Festival on Sunday, Boyz II Men is
known for a wholesome approach to a love song.
How can a young woman work her way into the heart of one of
the four most eligable bachelors in pop-the hitmaking harmony quartet known as Boyz II Men? Here's a hint: SLOW DOWN.
That's a reversal of traditional dating roles, perhaps.
But Boyz II Men - appearing at the Essence Music Festival Sunday - is a group that soaks up tradition and then gives it a '90s spin.
They do it in their music-a jazzed-up version of classic doo-wop harmony with hip-hop beats. And it's how these modern day versions of the loverman prototype manage their romances.
Unlike, say, Barry White (performing at Essence Sunday), who barges into the bedroom and makes seduction into a psychological power play, Boyz II Men think of courting in almost courtly terms.
For Shawn Stockman, who sings tenor in the group, the perfect date is an old-fashioned good time. No pressures, no head games.
"I'm not too much of a flamboyant dater," he said from a tour stop recently. "I like very simple things. It can be a walk next to a little lake, a picnic, sitting on the couch watching a movie or something like that, listening to some music, some jazz. That's basically it. Something very mellow, very relaxed, very nonchalant.
"I guess I get into getting into the person personally, and not getting into a situation where you have to put on airs. With walking in the park and eating fruit" - just like in Boyz II Men videos - "you're more relaxed and you're more yourself. You learn more about the person a lot faster when situations are in a relaxed, calm, harmless state."
As if his attitude comes as a surprise.
If Boyz II Men is known for anything, it's the wholesome, sugar-sweet romance they bring to such megahit ballads as "End of the Road," "On Bended Knee," "Thank You," and "I'll Make Love to You." They may have made their mark - like New Edition and Bell Biv Devoe before them act as torch-bearers of the soul singing tradition. But Boyz II Men embodies the thing that seems so much in vouge for '90s men, and yet so hard to find on today's mean streets.
Sensitivity.
While many of their peers in R&B pose with beepers and pistols and make headlines by getting in trouble with the law, the young men in Boyz II Men take a different track.
Let the other guys be hard. Boyz II Men is smooth.
But even though they represent - with their preppy dress and absence of vulgarity - a model of upscale purity, they don't look down their noses.
Stockman, Nathan Morris, Wanya Morris, (no relation to Nathan) and Michael McCary have compassion and understanding for those who find themselves trapped in the cycle of drugs and violence that plagues American cities.
"In certain enviroments, being a young man, you have to do certain things that you don't want to do. And you have to live certain ways that you don't to live in order to get out of that life," Stockman said.
"Actually, all four of us grew up in not such great enviroments. We all grew up in the ghetto (in Philadelphia)."
But although they were in the midst of all the things that tempt today's young people. "we tried our best to steer away from that," Stockman said.
And yet, he added, "We never disconnected ourselves from people who might have been doing those certain things.
They were still our friends and we still tried to help them out as much as we could."
The reason Boyz II Men, like many others, was able to choose the high road is that they were guided by voices of wisdom.
"I think the emphasis with our families and the people we associated with was different," he said. "It's like, a lot of people tend to depict the stereotype of the ghetto as being a place where people carry guns and everything is just terrible. But it really isn't. And we're four examples of that.
"We had people growing up in the ghetto with us who were about positivity and wanted to make changes, and wanted it not to be about carrying guns and things of that nature, who wanted to make a change. And those are people we felt close to-friends and family members alike. Those are the people we chose to hang around."
Harmonizing in the school yard and on street corners just like the Philly soul groups of old used to do, the four friends got started on their path to the big time with help from one who shared their vision, Michael Bivins, formely of ground-breaking hip-hop doo-wop groups New Edition and Bell Biv Devoe, discovered Boyz II Men (who took their name from a New Edition song) at a Philadelphia concert.
"Michael Bivins is responsible for presenting us to the world," Stockman said. "He's responsible for basically developing us, our image as far as the outfits, the clothing that we wear."
Success was nearly instant. The group's 1991 debut album, Cooleyhighharmony, sold seven million copies and won two Grammys. Their second album, II, seems on track for similar acheivements.
The fast ride to the top has been a whirlwind for the young singers. Stockman is only 22. But as the group's name suggests, he and the others are more interested in maturing than in living a fantasy.
He has learned, for example, that when it comes to being a man. "Pride is something that you have to live without...Sometimes you have to sacrifice your ego and just go for what's correct, (even) if it doesn't feel good."
Responsibility has helped the Boyz become Men. But Stockman says he still tries to preserve the child within.
"Little things - watching cartoons and eating milk and cookies and sitting in my pajamas or something like that. That," he said, "is just as important as getting a business day done."