The concept of "hip-hop, smoothed out on the R&B tip with a pop feel — appeal — to it" — New Jack Swing, if you will — doesn't seem revolutionary now. But who could have guessed, when Bell Biv DeVoe were chanting that phrase on the fade-out of their hit "Do Me," that they were describing pretty much every hit song in the second decade of the 21st century? Hell, it was 1990 — people were wearing backwards overalls, horrible things were being done to women's bangs and folks were airbrushing everything. It hardly seemed like a cultural epoch that would have lasting relevance. Then again, I was 11. I couldn't have spelled "epoch" even if I wanted to — what the hell did I know?
If you reverse-engineer the whole situation, it seems pretty obvious that Bell Biv DeVoe's deft blend of hip-hop beats and smooth R&B would, in fact, have a pop appeal to it, but as the Cold War was ending, those genres weren't mingling very well. We're talking about the same year De La Soul declared R&B stood for "rap and bullshit." Hip-hop was just beginning to make its ascendancy, and was still a little miffed by the R&B establishment's dismissal of its early efforts. And just as none of hip-hop's practitioners knew that R&B would spend the rest of the decade riding rap's swagger, nobody could have told you that hip-hop's burgeoning gangsta aesthetic — the drugs-money-hos axis — would dominate not just urban music but pop music for almost 20 years.
Then again, in 1990 — when "Poison" was on every stereo and "Do Me" was the pickup line of choice for a certain barely pubescent horn-dog who shall remain nameless — no one would have guessed that by 1993 Bell Biv DeVoe would be cast aside, their slick stylized pop crushed under the heels of gangsta-rap's Chuck Taylors. The sample-heavy, East Coast boom-bap of Hootie Mack, the oft-ignored follow-up to BBD's all-time-classic debut, would be subsumed by the minimal West Coast G-funk of Dr. Dre's The Chronic, released six months earlier and enjoying its second Top 10 single — "Dre Day" — when Hootie hit shelves. In the hail of cultural bullets that followed, Bell Biv DeVoe and their boy-band resume became increasingly irrelevant.
Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins and Ronnie DeVoe were on hiatus from New Edition, arguably one of the best boy bands of the preceding decade. (Do we even have to talk about how awesome "Cool It Now" and "Mr. Telephone Man" are? No.) New Edition were inarguably the prototype for the biggest boy band of the era, fellow Bostonians New Kids on the Block. On top of that — as if that wasn't enough boy band cred to destroy any grown man's career — Michael Bivins was the A&R mastermind behind playground-frequenting elementary school kids Another Bad Creation and sentimental Starter cap collectors Boyz II Men. By 1993, The East Coast Family — Boyz II Men, ABC, BBD, natch — were looking exceedingly square in the light of "Deeez Nuuuts."
And by "Deeez Nuuuts," I mean the Dr. Dre song. That the "Deeez Nuuuts" retort has become this generation's answer to the knock-knock joke is a tribute to the The Chronic's cultural cachet. On the other hand, did you even know Hootie Mack was an album? Exactly. Even though BBD were mining the same lyrical veins as their West Coast peers — Hootie Mack is essentially an ode to getting stoned and chasing tail — and the music is certainly as strong as on their debut, the hit parade passed right on by. Sure, there was that other album around the turn of the century, but the less we speak of turn-of-the-century music, the better.
The thing is, the hit parade's drunken trajectory has led us right to where we started — hip-hop, smoothed out on the R&B tip, with a pop appeal to it. It's hard not to look at contemporary stars like Drake, B.o.B. and Wale — artists who pull as much from the rap world as the pop world — and not see them as heirs to the New Jack throne. But after 20 years and four copies of Poison in four different formats, I'm liable to hear Bell Biv DeVoe in just about anything. Then again, "Poison" has never really gone away — even your mom knows how to "smack it up, flip it, rub it down!" — and a sentiment like "Do Me!" never really goes out of style, so it shouldn't be a surprise that the rest of the world finally caught up. Again.
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