Boyz II Men, Salt-N-Pepa, et Bell Biv DeVoe

Their style of music includes emotional ballads and Acapella styles. During the 1990s the group found international stardom after the release of their first number one single "End of the Road" in 1992. They are amongst the biggest names in Acappella and R&B.

The group were formerly known and started out as 'Unique Attraction', which started when two of the members started performing together at their High School. Some members joined and left throughout the early years, but with their permanent group members finally together, they changed their name to Boyz II Men.

After meeting the artist Michael Bivins, back stage at a gig and performing for him and his group mates, Bivins gave the group his number and after more contact he agreed to help produce the group. There was however some delays as the group started having personality clashes, which led to Marc Nelson leaving the group, making it a quartet.

Boys II Men's debut album was released in 1991 called "Cooleyhighharmony", and as promised was produced by Michael Bivins. "Cooleyhighharmony" did extremely well and sold over nine million copies as well as winning a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.

In 1992 the group joined MC Hammer on his "2 Legit 2 Quit" tour as his opening act and have since gone on to do many tours around the country. And in 2013, Boys II Men got given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

At the start of January in 2013, the group appeared on "The View" with "New Kids on the Block" and "98 Degrees" to announce a joint tour that would start that summer, and on February of that year they announced that they would soon stop touring and begin doing shows in Las Vegas instead.

You may have also seen that the following year they appeared at the end of an episode of "How I Met Your Mother", doing an Acapella performance. Their eleventh album "Collide" was released on October 21, 2014.

Salt-N-Pepa are trailblazers, pure and simple. Arriving at a time when hip-hop was considered a fad and would be finished by the end of the 1980’s, they were a huge part of the genre’s legitimization in the public eye and would go on to have the biggest selling album by a female rap act with their fourth effort “Very Necessary” and also be the first female winners of a Grammy award in a rap category for their single “None Of Your Business”.

James and Denton formed the group as a duo initially, debuting in 1985 with the single “The Showstopper” under the name Super Nature. The single was discovered by Pop Art Records and became a hit on the R&B charts. From the start the duo set about tearing down the standards and stereotypes of how women in Hip-Hop should be, owning their sexuality and empowering themselves through it long before anyone else thought to.

“The Showstopper” garnered the interest of label Next Plateau Records, who signed them for an album release. It was then that the duo became a trio, with Roper joining the group full time as their DJ, and the album followed soon after, entitled “Hot, Cool & Vicious”. It was a modest success initially, with some charting R&B hits in the form of “Tramp” and “Chick On The Side” among others. And then “Push It” happened.

A San Francisco based DJ called Cameron Paul created a remix to the song, the B-side of “Tramp”, and their rise after that was stratospheric. A monster hit on both sides of the Atlantic, the trio were now legitimate pop stars despite James and Denton being barely into their twenties and Roper being a mere 16. However, their star was only going to rise with time.

To this day, the vast majority of female rappers around owe a certain debt to Salt-N-Pepa. They followed up with even bigger hits like “Let’s Talk About Sex” and “Whatta Man”, they won Grammy’s, had platinum albums and singles. They were one of the key acts that legitimised female rappers and they can still rock it live to this day. They’re legends, but you knew that much already, right?

In pop music you get two kinds of one hit wonders. The more common kind is the group or artist that is so ridiculously of their time that it makes one wonder how anyone took them seriously in the first place. These are the kind of hits that make the people who saw their rise up the charts first-hand wince in pain at the very thought of them. Bell Biv Devoe, it’s safe to say, are not one of those bands. They are the other kind of one hit wonder, the kind that has a pretty consistent level of love that passes from generation to generation, and few bands deserve that kind of respect more than these guys.

The band were formed during the hiatus of their previous band New Edition, who were a pop quintet formed in 1978 when most of its members were around ten and eleven. By the time they were fifteen and sixteen they were headlining national concert tours and scoring top five singles and albums regularly. However, all was not well behind the scenes. Throughout their time together the group were plagued by label and management problems, and by the end of the decade most of the band wanted out. In the wake of this, Bell, Bivins and Devoe were put together to form their own group by legendary production duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

By 1990, the band had recorded “Poison”, their first album, which featured the production skills of Eric Sadler, and Hank and Keith Shocklee, otherwise known as Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad. This mix of hard edged hip-hop and smooth pop sensibilities basically created the genre of new jack swing as we know it and their debut single, their album’s title track, was a smash hit that’s gone on to be one of the most enduring pop songs of the early 90’s. “Do Me!” the bands follow up single, was equally as succesful, getting to number three on the Billboard Hot 100.

Since then the band has released two further albums, both favouring their hip-hop influences over the pop sounds that made their name. The band have also frequently reunited with their New Edition bandmates to perform concerts and record new albums. In Bell Biv DeVoe we have a group that the pop world would sorely miss if they went away, the music world is a brighter place with their presence, and to this day they can still put on a killer live show. Highly recommended.