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Can't live with him, can't live without him: That's what New Edition has learned over the years.
Working with a crazy person is tough. Working with a crazy person who plays an important role in your business is even tougher. But working with a crazy person who is your business takes a special sort of masochist.
So I'd like you to meet Michael Bivins, Ricky Bell, Ronnie DeVoe, and Ralph Tresvant. As members of New Edition, these four gentlemen made hearts throb in the '80s with such hits as "Candy Girl" and "Cool It Now." In fact, New Edition served as the pop-prototype for every Backstreeter and *NSYNCer in the plague of boy bands that would descend upon North America in the following decade. However, the multitalented teens in New Edition could actually sing, produce hits you can still listen to 20-odd years later, and perform live without lip-synching every word.
But like all the imitators who followed them, each baby-faced member of New Edition played out a specific archetype: Bivins was the serious fellow; Tresvant, the sensitive young man; Bell, the slickster; and DeVoe was "the one most likely to someday become a RE/MAX realtor." (It's true; check him out at www.thedevoeteam.com.)
That still leaves one role to fill: the crazy guy. And the two most-asked questions about New Edition concern that guy: Will he appear at the group's next show? (Answer: No.) And will he be on the next N.E. album? (Answer: Yes . . . allegedly.)
Oh, my bad. Where are my manners? I'd like you to meet Bobby Brown . . .
Robert Beresford Brown was one of the founders of New Edition, but he was also the baby of the group; he wasn't even 15 when they blew up. That might have been why -- behind all the smiling press photos -- he was throwing tantrums and bucking for a solo career, even at the height of the group's mid-'80s success. Then again, he might have been smarter than anyone realized at the time. New Edition couldn't go on singing about candy girls forever, and Bobby -- on the verge of manhood -- got himself voted out of the group in 1987.
King of Stage, Brown's first solo album later that same year, was a New Edition sound-alike that stiffed, but a year later, his second effort, Don't Be Cruel, took the new jack swing that producer Teddy Riley had been incubating with singer Keith Sweat and spread it worldwide. (R&B is still commercially relevant today largely because of new jack, the bridge that connected soul to hip-hop.) Besides, if you're under 30 and you know what the word "prerogative" means, you probably owe that knowledge to Bobby and not to one of your teachers. There was a method to his madness -- even back then.
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