The guys responsible for II - the CD that's been ruling the
record charts - are definetly famous. But you might not want
to use that particular "f"-word around them.
We were going to do a story on Boyz II Men's Michael McCary, Shawn
Stockman, Nathan Morris, and Wanya Morris feel about being
famous. But there was one little problem.
The Philadelphia four insist that they are not famous.
"'Fame' is a word we don't really use," Shawn tells us. "I
mean, we realize that we are popular, and that's cool. But
Michael Jackson is famous. Barbra Striesand is
famous."
Michael puts it another way. "I'm not going to say I feel
famous," he stresses. "But I will say I have a feeling of
self-worth about what we have done."
Well, after hearing this, we obviously couldn't do a story
about four famous guys. So we worked around it.
How about talking about when the guys first knew they had,
uh, self-worth?
Nathan: "I guess I can speak for all of us when I say it
was after "End of the Road" came out. We were home, and
people on the radio would mention our name, or we would see
an article and they would mention our name. And people
were familiar with us enough to know who they meant. So,
people using our names in categories that have nothing to
do with us made us think that people accepted us."
How about the worse part of, being fam-opps, we mean, in
possesion of self-worth?
Shawn: "The up side is, we get a lot more privileges. You
can take care of your family, and you can just put all that
financial worry aside and just be open to create more and
more music."
Boy, it's a good thing these guys don't think they're
famous. Come to think of it, they probably don't consider
themselves humble, talented, and fun to talk to,
either.