Even in the new jack swing era, R&B acts mostly marketed themselves in the sophisticated, urbane mold of Luther Vandross, Anita Baker, and Freddie Jackson.
And that’s usually what works best for us.”īell Biv DeVoe’s uniquely “Mental” approach would prove wildly influential. So we’ll just do anything, just go with our feelings. “We just thought, ‘Damn! Imagine us doing something like that.’ Because we always think ‘Why not?’ We always ask that question. “We listened to Public Enemy’s stuff and we were just amazed,” Bell said at the time. With the notable exception of Teddy Riley, the idea that hip-hop producers crafting R&B tracks was still novel in 1990, but over the next ten years, hip-hop heavyweights from Jermaine Dupri to Kay Gee to Timbaland would produce some of the biggest R&B records of the decade. The group would work with hip-hop powerhouses like the aforementioned Bomb Squad and superproducer Marley Marl, setting the table for hip-hop producers to tackle R&B projects. “We want to be the first to express this kind of music. “Our music is mentally hip-hop, smoothed out on the R&B tip, with a pop feel appeal to it,” Bell would continuously explain. And they had a name for their unique sound and look: “mental.” Almost immediately, the trio was rebranded as something fresh and exciting. When I wrote it as a song, I let a lot of my friends hear it, and they said it was weird.”įreeze’s beat featured a sample of hardcore rhymer Kool G Rap’s hit “Poison” as the hook, and when paired with the group’s image, it helped reintroduce BBD as something more than just “the other guys” in New Edition. “It wasn’t a song at first,” Freeze said. Freeze said the song’s lyrics were personal for him-even before he had a song to put the words to. In a 2016 interview with Red Bull Academy, producer Dr. Hicks tapped Freeze for the BBD project, which by then already featured big names like The Bomb Squad. BBD’s manager Hiriam Hicks knew about an up-and-coming producer named Elliot Straite, who went by the name Dr. & Babyface, Teddy Riley and Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis had dominated the R&B charts during the late 1980s, as new jack swing took over airwaves and dance floors with an infectious blend of tuneful R&B and hip-hop beats. We figured we’d put some harmonies, some melodies over and that would kind of smooth the whole thing out.” “We wanted that hip-hop flavor, but we wanted to kind of smooth it out. “When we’d go hang out at the clubs or whatever, that’s what was happening. “We just figured we’d go in the studio and do what we’ve been wanting to do all along, the kind of music that we’ve been listening to,” Bell shared. Freeze and hip-house duo Wolf & Epic, they guaranteed that their sound wouldn’t retread what had worked in new jack swing–it would be something unique. That was what caught us, that whole kind of flavor,” Bell explained to the Baltimore Sun in 1990.
“The kind of style we were groomed into from our early days had this Temptations, Jacksons, Blue Magic kind of feel. Eschewing the tailored suits and dapper presentation of most 80s R&B, this act was going to set a new blueprint for R&B style with hip-hop swagger. , Who wanna see y’all three? I wanna see New Edition! All this breaking up, Bobby solo, Ralph doing his thing, now y’all…what happened to New Edition?!”īBD’s sound and image was going for something harder than what New Edition or even Bobby Brown had done up to that point. “I was like, Y’all gonna put this out? He was like, Yeah man, me, Ronnie and Rick, we going to do a group called BBD. And put in a tape of the demo of ‘Poison.’ No disrespect, I love the record now, but when I heard the demo I swore it was the worst thing I ever heard in my life.” It was me, Mike Bivins and Dana Dane, we were going to a club, somewhere. “The lyrics that ended up making the record were rhyme,” Kwame would tell Hip-Hop Wired in 2015. Rapper/producer Kwame ghostwrote some of the raps in “ Poison,” and he admitted that he wasn’t impressed with the idea of Bell Biv DeVoe as a group-or their soon-to-be-hit. Of course, no one was expecting much from the three former New Edition members who’d famously stayed in the background for much of that group’s tenure. If New Edition was going on hiatus for Tresvant to start his solo career in earnest (as Gill refocused on his own new album with former MCA head Jheryl Busby over at Motown), why not try to do their own thing? Bivins had been brimming with ideas and was eager to try them out in a new format. On the suggestion of Jam & Lewis, Bell, Bivins, and DeVoe decided to form a trio.
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