As New Edition grew from boys to men, embracing a sophisticated sound on their 1988 album Heart Break, Bivins was quietly establishing his hip-hop credibility. For better or worse, Bell Biv DeVoe set the stage for three decades of singers who want to talk, dress, and act like rappers.īack when he was only 14, Michael Bivins introduced himself to the world with a little rap on New Edition’s 1982 breakout hit “Candy Girl”: “She walks so fast, she looks so sweet/She makes my heart just skip a beat.” The group made smiling, bubble-gum electro-pop, but Bivins had the cool confidence of a rapper, even if he was stuck singing background vocals most of the time. A collaboration with revered Public Enemy production crew the Bomb Squad, Poison embodied the style and sound of hip-hop in a more convincing way than any R&B album before it. You’ve heard “ Poison” too many times, probably at a wedding or a school dance or some perennially bad episode of “Carpool Karaoke.” But Bell Biv DeVoe is more than just a song, and their debut album represents a critical leap in the evolution of R&B. Ricky Bell spoke up: “You have to listen to the music to understand what we’re talking about.” The show’s host wasn’t sure what to make of it: “And like.what does that mean?”
They talked about it in every interview, including that day on BET. BBD even had a neat little mission statement to explain their vision: “Our music is mentally hip-hop, smoothed out on the R&B tip with a pop feel appeal to it.” They stamped the slogan on their album cover and flashed it on screen during their videos. Poison was a conceptually groundbreaking pop album that reinvented the relationship between R&B and hip-hop for the ’90s. It was definitely Bell Biv DeVoe’s moment. By the end of the year, Billboard would declare BBD the biggest new pop group of 1990. Their album, also called Poison, had just dropped, and it was on its way to selling 4 million copies.
This was 1990, and the trio’s debut single “Poison” was on the verge of breaking into the Top 10. “Mike keeps stressing BBD-it’s not a BBD moment,” he said. Tresvant decided to interrupt and set it straight.
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