By shelz.
Boyz II Men’s climb up the early 90’s R&B ladder was like a fairytale. They adopted New Edition as their heroes, naming the group after one of their songs and practicing harmony with New Edition songs in their high school bathrooms. Sneaking backstage after a Bell Biv Devoe show, the group managed to not only meet Michael Bivins, but present an impromptu version of “Can You Stand The Rain.” Bivins was immediately convinced and the group was eventually signed to Biv Ten records on the strength of that performance.
Bivins turned the group into his pet project and he crafted an image for the quartet that left almost no element to chance. They were given an aesthetic that married new jack hot with old school cool (a look that was copied for years afterwards). All four were assigned nicknames. They were even given their own subgenre, Hip Hop Doo Wop. And all of this was in stone before the first album. When Cooleyhighharmony finally dropped, it was obvious all the grooming was worth it.
The foundation of the album was a smart and seamless mix of old and new, fast and slow. Minus a couple of songs produced by The Characters, this was a Dallas Austin-helmed production that made the most of the guys’ vocal talent. Their close knit harmonies were updated enough to work with tracks that could have been reserved for rappers and the slower of the offerings were lush enough to fit into Motown’s heyday.
Loosely broken into two halves, Cooleyhighharmoney started with the ballads, a move that has introduced plenty of crooners to the public with their most powerful material. The first couple of songs, “Please Don’t Go” and “Lonely Heart” endeared them to the ladies with an emotional connection that was being slowly replaced in R&B by the humpin’ and pumpin’ that rose to prominence by the turn of the millennium. New Edition may have been their inspiration, but Boyz II Men had a more verdant, mature sound that could easily switch from the heart break of puppy love to the back break of the bedroom. “Uhh Ahh,” the surprise track of the slow section proved that Alex Vanderpool and company weren’t going to be strangers to the sexual side of the genre. The single that inspired the album title “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday,” a cover of the song of the same name from the movie Cooley High, closed out the slow half on a somber note, but that didn’t last long.
The second half of the album stepped up the energy and gave fans something to do their Running Man to. “Motownphilly” was a quick lesson in their journey up to that point with a title that gave props to both where they were and where they came from. It was bass heavy and loaded down with layers of samples, but the boys still managed to slide in a section of harmonizing that didn’t get lost on all the new jack mayhem. “Under Pressure” kept the pace going. The track was Austin’s most chaotic, but the crew kept their vocal deliveries calm and collected. The closers, “Little Things” and “Your Love” mimicked adult radio with mid-tempo soulful crooning. In retrospect, it was a smart move, as the quartet were talented enough to pull fans from across generational lines.
It’s 20 years today that Boyz II Men released their freshman offering. Cooleyhighharmony sold over 9 million copies and won the 1991 Grammy for Best Recording from an R&B group. But that was far from the end of the road for the quartet, as they went on to become the best selling R&B group of all time. It’s a feat that two decades later, they can still claim. And it started with a simple fairytale.
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