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.īy 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. 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. However, all was not well behind the scenes.
By the time they were fifteen and sixteen they were headlining national concert tours and scoring top five singles and albums regularly.
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. 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. Bell Biv Devoe, it’s safe to say, are not one of those bands. 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. 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. In pop music you get two kinds of one hit wonders.
