Boyz II Men are a Grammy Award-winning American group from Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
. Initiated during 1988 as a
quintet which originally included
Marc Nelson, Boyz II Men found fame as a
quartet, with members
Nathan Morris,
Michael McCary,
Shawn Stockman,and
Wanya Morris on
Motown Records during the early 1990s. Nelson
left the group before their first recording to pursue a solo
career. The group specialized in
new jack
swing-style music.
Based on sales, Boyz II Men is the most successful R&B male
vocal group of all time. They recorded
five number 1 R&B successes between 1992 and 1997 and have sold
more than 60 million albums. Three of its number 1 hits, "
End of the Road", "
I'll Make Love to You", and "
One Sweet Day" (with
Mariah Carey), set and exceeded records for the
longest period of time a single remained scored at number 1 on the
Billboard Hot 100; "One Sweet Day"
still holds the record. Although "
On
Bended Knee" did not exceed any records, it was still a very
popular song that reached number 1 and made Boyz II Men the third
artist (behind
The Beatles and
Elvis) to replace themselves at the number one rating
of the Billboard Hot 100.
Boyz II Men was contracted to Motown Records from 1990 to 2000, at
which point they moved to parent label
Universal Records. After the 2000 album
Nathan Michael Shawn
Wanya, Boyz II Men transferred to
Arista Records. In 2003, Michael McCary left
the group due to chronic back problems resulting from
scoliosis. As of 2009, Wanya Morris, Shawn
Stockman, and Nathan Morris continue to tour and record as a trio.
At the
1995 Grammy Awards, the
group received four
Grammy Award awards
for their work, including two for their
1994 second album,
II in
1995. Boyz II Men was named Billboard's
most successful group and 4th overall artist of the 1990s by
Billboard Magazine.
History
Beginnings
The group,
known originally as Unique Attraction, was founded during 1986 at
the Philadelphia High School for Creative and
Performing Arts
, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There,
friends Nathan Morris and Marc Nelson organized several R&B
singing groups, all of which ended soon. Eventually, they recruited
tenors Wanya Morris and Shawn Stockman and
bass Michael McCary.
They found inspiration in
New Edition's
harmonies and routines, and eventually renamed the group "Boyz II
Men", after one of New Edition's songs. In 1989, they snuck
backstage after a concert performed by
Bell Biv DeVoe, a New Edition spin-off group.
Boyz II Men performed an acappella rendition of New Edition's
"
Can You Stand the Rain" for
New Edition/BBD member
Michael
Bivins. Bivins was impressed by the group, and began plans to
contract them to Motown Records through a production deal with his
Biv Ten Records company. But before the group began recording, Marc
Nelson left because of personality conflicts, reducing the quintet
to a quartet. Other early workings include work with
Michael Jackson.
A year before releasing their debut album, they made an appearance
on a solo album by Visam. They are listed in the credits as singing
background vocals on the song "One Mile from Paradise" as "Boy's to
Men".
Cooleyhighharmony
Boyz II Men's first album,
Cooleyhighharmony, was released on
Motown in 1991 and was executive produced by Michael Bivins.
Cooleyhighharmony s drum-heavy
new jack swing sound and multi-layered
sampled backdrops were similar to
that of Bell Biv DeVoe's own work, but featured classic-soul styled
vocals in place of BBD's
rapping and
brassier
singing. This style was dubbed
"
hip hop doo
wop" by the group and Bivins, who presented Boyz II Men and
adolescent R&B group
Another
Bad Creation to the public as BBD's protégés.
Boyz II Men's first single, the
Dallas
Austin-produced "
Motownphilly"
featured a rap cameo by Michael Bivins, and was accompanied with a
music video that presented the group in
hip hop style. (The video also included cameos from fellow CAPA
alumni
Black Thought and
Questlove of
The Roots)
Their second single was a cover of a classic Motown tune,
G.C. Cameron's
"
It's So Hard
to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" from the 1975 film
Cooley High, while "Uhh Ahh" served as the
third single.
From the beginning, Boyz II Men featured all four members as leads,
avoiding the usual R&B group arrangement of one or two lead
singers and a team of background singers. The multiple-lead
arrangement became a Boyz II Men trademark, and it became typical
to hear Wanya Morris' vibrato-heavy
tenor,
Shawn Stockman's tenor voice, Nathan Morris'
baritone, and Michael McCary's
bass (often used in spoken-word sections
of many Boyz II Men hits) trading bars in each song.
The album's liner notes identified nicknames for each member of the
group. These nicknames were devised in collaboration with Bivins in
an attempt at marketing. Wanya was "Squirt", Shawn was "Slim",
Michael was simply "Bass", and Nathan assumed the name "Alex
Vanderpool", after a soap opera character who brandished a nerdy
style.
In time, Nathan Morris would become something of the de facto
manager of the group, handling its operations and business
interests, but the group never presented one man as more important
than the other.
Cooleyhighharmony was a major success, eventually selling
over nine million copies and winning the 1992
Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with
Vocals. "Motownphilly" and "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to
Yesterday" were number 1 R&B hits and top five U.S. pop hits,
and Boyz II Men joined
MC Hammer's
high-profile
2 Legit 2 Quit tour as an opening act. While
traveling the country, their tour manager
Khalil Roundtree was murdered, and the
group's future performances of "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to
Yesterday" were dedicated to him.
"End of the Road"
While touring during 1992, Boyz II Men returned briefly to the
studio to record the single "
End of the
Road", co-written and produced by
Kenneth
"Babyface" Edmonds, for the soundtrack to
Eddie Murphy's film
Boomerang. "End of the Road"
became a record-breaking success, remaining at number 1 on the
Billboard Hot 100 for thirteen weeks, breaking the previous record
of 11 weeks set by
Elvis Presley with
"Don't Be Cruel"/"Hound Dog" in 1956.
Cooleyhighharmony
was reissued during 1993, with "End of the Road" added as a special
bonus track. It has been said that the song was recorded in four
hours.
II
During 1994 Boyz II Men's second album,
II, was released. Most of the
tracks on
II were written and produced by
Tim & Bob Tim Kelley and Bob Robinson (5)
Babyface (2) and the successful team of
Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis ;
Michael Bivins distanced himself from Boyz II Men to focus on
developing new acts. Several of
II s tracks became major
singles, among them Jam & Lewis's "On Bended Knee", and
Babyface's "I'll Make Love to You" and "
Water Runs Dry". "Thank You" and the
hip hop soul track "Vibin'" both missed the
U.S. Top 20; but "Water Runs Dry" became number 2, and "I'll Make
Love to You and "On Bended Knee" became number 1 hits.
"I'll Make Love to You" broke "End of the Road's" 13-week record at
number 1, by spending 14 weeks at the top of the chart (a feat
equaled earlier that year by
Whitney
Houston's cover of "
I Will Always
Love You"). "On Bended Knee" replaced "I'll Make Love to you"
at number 1, making Boyz II Men the third act to replace themselves
at number 1, after Elvis and The Beatles. Meanwhile,
II
sold more than 12 million copies in the United States alone,
becoming one of the best-selling albums ever released by an R&B
group act.
At the
37th Grammy Awards on
March 1,
1995,
the group won two
Grammy Awards:
Best R&B
Album for
II and
Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. for
"I'll Make Love To You".
Inspirations, influence, and impact
By this time, Boyz II Men were a popular act, not only in the U.S,
but worldwide. Boyz II Men became recognized as something of a
1990s version of
The Temptations,
the 1960s Motown act that became the label's best-selling male
group act. Many of the elements that made The Temptations, other
classic Motown artists such as
The Four
Tops and
Smokey Robinson & the
Miracles, and Boyz II Men's mentors
New
Edition successful were adapted by the group, including a
clean-cut image, smooth harmonies, and synchronized dance and
performance movements. The members of Boyz II Men were particularly
noted for their vocal abilities, and helped continue a trend in
R&B towards an emphasis on emotive singing with significant use
of
melisma, a trademark of Wanya Morris'
singing.
Several R&B competitors began showing obvious inspiration from
Boyz II Men's work and singing style, among them,
Shai,
Soul for
Real,
BLACKstreet,
All-4-One, and later
Dru
Hill,
Jagged Edge, and
(featuring old Boyz II Men member Marc Nelson)
Az
Yet. Boyz II Men's closest competitor,
Uptown Records act
Jodeci, were, with their more sexually charged style,
quite different from Boyz II Men's wholesomeness. Jodeci's style
had its own followers (many of them, Dru Hill and Jagged Edge in
particular, they shared with Boyz II Men), but their influence on
the music industry as a whole was not as widespread as that of Boyz
II Men.
Also notable is that several record producers,
Lou Pearlman in particular, developed several
acts in the same style as Boyz II Men, but with male Caucasian
singers instead of African-American ones. Because of this, Boyz II
Men is often considered to have continued the "
boy band" craze started by
New Kids on the Block in the US (a
genre already popular in the UK and Europe with bands such as
Take That,
Boyzone
and
East 17 selling millions across the
globe) that reached a climax by the end of the 1990s, with groups
such as
The Backstreet Boys and
*NSYNC, going on to widespread international
success, and others, such as Motown act
98
Degrees, finding more moderate mainstream success.
Evolution and label conflicts
The Motown company issued
The Remix Collection, a
compilation of
remixes of various Boyz II Men
songs from
Cooleyhighharmony and
II. The group
itself had opposed the release of the collection, and as a result
there was a dispute between the company and the group. Boyz II Men
initiated their own recording company Stonecreek (which released
material by artists such as
Uncle
Sam) to be distributed by
Epic
Records, not Motown.
Evolution was
released during 1997 to mixed reviews and sold three million
copies, far below
II s 12 million and
Cooleyhighharmony s 9 million. Only one of
Evolution s singles, the Jam/Lewis-penned "
Four Seasons of Loneliness", charted
at number 1. The second single, the Babyface-helmed "
A Song for Mama" (the theme song to the
Babyface-produced film
Soul
Food) was a Top 10 success, but the follow-up "Can't Let
Her Go" underperformed.
As the label problems mounted, health problems began to take their
toll on the group. While on tour to support the
Evolution
album, Wanya Morris developed a
polyp on his
vocal cords, and the group was forced to
postpone part of the tour until he recovered. When the group
appeared on
Keenen Ivory Wayans'
short-lived talk show just before the album's release, McCary
danced along with the other members as they performed
"Motownphilly".
Boyz II
Men's final Top 40 hit was "I Will Get
There", a Diane Warren-penned
single released in support of the soundtrack to DreamWorks
' first animated feature, The Prince of Egypt.
They were nominated for 2 Grammys in 1998: Best R&B Album for
Evolution and Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo or
Group for "A Song For Mama".
Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya
In 1999, Motown's parent company,
Polygram,
was bought by
Universal Music
Group. Amidst the major corporate restructure, Motown was
merged with UMG's Universal Records, where Boyz II Men found
themselves reassigned. It was during this time the group performed
"
America the Beautiful" at
Wrestlemania XV.
Their only studio LP album for Universal, 2000's
Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya,
was chiefly written and produced by the group itself, in an attempt
to update their sound and ward off critics who questioned the
group's reliance on Babyface's hit-making songcraft. While the
critics were more receptive to
Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya
than they had been to its predecessor, the LP sold 500,000 copies
in the US, 1 million copies worldwide, and although its two
singles, "Pass You By" and "Thank You in Advance" received media
attention, neither became hits.
Meanwhile, Michael McCary was diagnosed with scoliosis, which
limited his ability to dance at live performances. The other three
members eventually resorted to having McCary seated on a stool
while they did the dancing themselves.
Full Circle and "The Color of Love"
Boyz II Men departed from Universal in 2001, and the label released
a
greatest hits collection,
Legacy: The Greatest Hits Collection, to close out their
contract. Signing a new deal with Arista Records in 2002, Boyz II
Men began recording the
Full Circle album, and
recruited Babyface for a new single, "The Color of Love".
Arista
commissioned a high-budget music video, shot in four different
locales by four different directors: supervising director Little X filmed scenes featuring Michael McCary in
India, Hype Williams filmed Shawn
Stockman in Tokyo
, Benny Boom filmed Nathan Morris in Ghana
, and
Chris Robinson filmed
Wanya Morris in Puerto Rico and finally
all were filmed in New York. The resulting music video had a
debut on
BET, but
failed to have a great effect, and
Full Circle, like
Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya before it, sold slightly more
than 500,000 copies in the US and 1 million copies worldwide.
Throwback, Vol. 1
On January 30, 2003, Michael McCary retired from performing due to
his ongoing battle with scoliosis. Arista terminated Boyz II Men's
contract on April 30, and the remaining three members took a
temporary hiatus from the music industry. After a year out of the
spotlight, Boyz II Men created the independent label MSM Music
Group (distributed through
Koch
Records), and released the
Throwback, Vol. 1
LP, a collection of covers of songs such as
The Dazz Band's "
Let It
Whip",
Michael Jackson's
"
Human Nature",
and, as the single,
Bobby Caldwell's
"What You Won't Do for Love". For the record, Nathan took on the
bass lines as well as the baritone vocals that he sang when Boyz II
men was a quartet.
Throwback, Vol. 1 reached
number 59 on the Billboard 200. The group launched an independent
tour of North America and Asia in support of the
Throwback
series. The album has sold over 200,000 copies to date with little
to no promotion. Boyz II Men's seventh studio album,
The
Remedy, was released in Japan at the autumn of 2006. In other
regions, it was made available exclusively online through their
website BoyzIIMen.com on February 14, 2007.
Hitsville: USA
In mid-2007, the group resigned with Universal Records and released
the LP
Motown: A Journey
Through Hitsville USA through
Decca Records. The LP is a
cover album featuring songs from the Motown
Records catalog, co-produced by
Randy
Jackson of
American Idol
fame. The
Motown album includes covers of songs by The
Temptations ("
Just My
Imagination "),
Marvin Gaye
("
Ain't Nothing Like
the Real Thing", "
Mercy Mercy
Me"),
Smokey
Robinson & the Miracles ("
The Tracks of My Tears"), and even
Boyz II Men themselves (an a cappella version of "End of the
Road"). Executive Producers for the album were David Simone and
Winston Simone.
On October 25, 2007, the trio performed
"God Bless America" during the
seventh inning stretch of Game 2 of the 2007 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Colorado Rockies at Fenway Park
.. On November 3, 2007, the group performed
as special guests on the hit
ITV talent show,
The X Factor. On November
10, the band appeared in the Japanese television show,
Music
Fair21 singing, "Just My Imagination", "It's the Same Old
Song", "Reach Out (I'll Be There)" and "I'll Make Love to You"
featuring artist
AI and her newest song
"ONE". On November 13, 2007, Boyz II Men had a CD signing and a
performance at the FYE store in Philadelphia despite having been
asked by their label to be in either New York or L.A. for the
release of the album. Contrary to reports Boyz II Men promoted the
release of their new album at FYE in New York. They performed an a
cappella version of their smash hit "End Of The Road", and "Just My
Imagination" from the new album.
The "
Kurt Browning's Gotta Skate"
special aired on
NBC on November 11, 2007. The
special featured Olympic skaters skating to the hits of Motown
performed by Boyz II Men and The Temptations. Each group promoted
their new albums; Boyz II Men promoting
Motown: A Journey
Through Hitsville US and The Temptations promoting
Back To
Front, an album of famous 1970's covers which released on
October 23, 2007.
On a February 21, 2008 episode of the
Fox music-themed game show
Don't Forget the
Lyrics!, the group appeared as contestants on the show,
playing for charity. After blazing through categories such as
Motown, R&B, and even one named Boyz II Men, the group won
$500,000 and split the sum between two charities. As a promotion
for the
Hitsville CD, everyone in the audience got a free
copy of the album.
Boyz II Men recorded "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing" with
German singer
Joana Zimmer for her
third album
Showtime, which was released on May 30,
2008.
For the 51st Annual Grammy Awards, Boyz II Men received two
nominations for the album
Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville
USA (Best R&B Album and Best R&B Performance By A Duo
Or Group With Vocals for "Ribbon In The Sky").
In 2009, Boyz II Men announced plans for a new cover album, that
covers "artists I don’t think people would expect us to cover!"
according to Shawn Stockman. Entitled "Love", the album was
released on November 24, 2009. On September 6, 2009 at a concert in
Virginia Beach, VA, Shawn announced a 20th Anniversary album in
2011 that would "include all 4 members," sparking a tremendous
applause at the news of Michael McCary's return to the group after
6 year absence.
Appearances
- In the 1992 made for TV movie The Jacksons: An American
Dream, Boyz II Men appeared as a rival street singing group
that enters into a physical altercation with the newly formed
Jackson 5.
- On December 20, 1993, Boyz II Men appeared on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
as themselves in the episode "'Twas the Night Before Christening"
in Season 4.
- On September 3, 1995, Boyz II Men sang The Star Spangled Banner at the
inaugural game of the Jacksonville
Jaguars.
- On
August 4, 1996, Boyz II Men performed The Star Spangled Banner at
the Closing Ceremonies of the 1996
Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia
. They also recorded their rendition of the
US National Anthem for the Rhythm of the Games album.
- On March 28, 1999, at the First Union Centre in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, Boyz II Men sang America the Beautiful at
Wrestlemania XV.
- On February 21, 2008 Boyz II Men appeared as contestants on
Don't Forget The Lyrics.
They won $500,000 for charity.
- On March 31, 2009, Boyz II Men appeared on "Dancing with the
Stars: the Results Show". They performed a Motown medley and "End
of the Road".
- On September 25, 2009 Oklahoma City KJ103 Slow Jams with Brad
B! Presents Boys II Men Live at 7:30p on the Toyota Stage at the
State Fair of Oklahoma!
- On September 18, 2009 Utah State Fair Presents Boys II Men Live
at 7:30p on the grandstand stage.
- On September 25, 2009 on the USA
Network show Psych they recorded a remix
of the theme song
- On September 16, 2009 EXH Premium Live "Solo", Boyz II Men Live
as special guest to ATSUSHI from
- On November 7, 2009 The group sang "God Bless America" at the
Breeders Cup Classic at Santa Anna park in California.
Exile_ in Tokyo, Japan. They
sang 'On Bended Knee' and 'End of the road' together with EXILE
ATSUSHI [On Air on 9 Oct 2009]
Discography
- Studio albums
- Compilation, Holiday, Remix albums
- DVD
References
- HDNet interview
- Boyz II Men Official website - Biography: 60 million
recors sold worldwide
- http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/bio/index.jsp?pid=4168
-
http://www.mariahconnection.com/mariah-carey-90s-billboard-artist-of-the-decade
- The character in question, Alfred Vanderpool, appeared on
ABC's All My
Children.
- http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/bio/index.jsp?pid=4168
- The Official Site of Major League Baseball:
Official Info: Musical performers set for Games 1 and 2 of 2007
World Series
- http://www.soulofrnb.com/?p=1080
- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104541/fullcredits#cast
-
http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,229479,00.html
- Huey, Steve. "Boyz II Men". Allmusic. Retrieved from
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:fyeb97i7krst~T00
on August 17, 2005.
See also
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