What happens when you're a raisin in the hot Roxbury, Mass., sun? If you explode like a dream fulfilled, you sing, dance and 'tude your way to multiplatinum success. But explosions subside, even when you're New Edition Cinderellas Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins and Ronnie DeVoe. And after the boom, there's the fallout: namely, Bell Biv DeVoe's Hootie Mack, an album recorded far from the incendiary streets of Roxbury.

As Bobby Brown, that other New Edition alum, was perfecting his steely, superstar scowl with Don't Be Cruel (1988), Bell, Bivins and DeVoe were hanging out in our gang. These guys chased honeys, admitted they didn't always catch them and laughed while they held their hard dicks. Poison established New Edition's least-talented three as the horniest ghetto Henry Millers in black pop outside Minneapolis. Three years and 6 million albums later, they're no longer the restless, post-NE overachievers who recorded the second-best album of that crew's solo history. On Hootie Mack, Bell Biv DeVoe forget what worked the first time and tack a nail in the coffin of the NE legend. Maybe the boys are getting enough now.

The uptempo, percolating, fo'-the-fellas funk-groove assault of Poison has been replaced with mid- and slow-tempo songs and ballads. None approaches the bold lewdness of "Poison" and "Do Me!" or the self-deprecating humor of "B.B.D. (I Thought It Was Me?)." Poison was fun and got noticed because, despite the explicitness of rap in general, BBD could be badder and remain pop. "From the Back," a song so smooth you may not realize it's about doing it doggy style, is the only new song that rivals Poison's sexuality and beats.

In some ways, though, Hootie Mack is as revealing of BBD's maturation as their regression. "The Situation" presents a young playboy admirably begging to be allowed to raise his child. Meanwhile, ironically enough, "Nickel" and "Lovely," about the joys of getting high and lusting after a 16-year-old girl, respectively, see the boys taking their lewd sensibility too far. The themes are pointlessly crude – but still might be palatable if the tracks were hotter and their delivery stronger.

The album's second half slows the tempo to a crawl with an interesting ballad, "Something in Your Eyes," and two other forgettable ones. Maybe this is meant to lull you to sleep so you don't notice how short Hootie Mack is. Or that the 47-minute album doesn't include "Gangsta," which came out last winter and would be among the album's strongest songs.

Hootie Mack makes you wish for the unhinged, unpredictable BBD of Poison. It confirms that Bell Biv DeVoe are no longer the hungry boys who'd seen the world and come home to Roxbury to change black pop. The New Edition boom is over. But it was inevitable. Raisins explode only in poems. (RS 663)

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