New Edition

Originally assembled by songwriter/producer Maurice Starr in the hope of creating a latter-day Jack-son 5, New Edition went from teen idols to hip-hop godfathers in less than a decade. The New Edition of Candy Girl is endearing but ragged, a bit unsure in the high register and none-too-close in its harmonies. That's not to say the album doesn't work: "Candy Girl" is a near-perfect gloss on the Jackson 5's "ABC," while "Is This the End" does an admirable job of rewriting "I'll Be There."

By New Edition, the group had moved into the mainstream, dumping Starr (he later concocted New Kids on the Block as a form of revenge) and working with top-flight L.A. studio talent. It paid off, thanks to insinuatingly tuneful material like "Cool It Now," which worked rap-style exchanges around Ralph Tresvant's boyish tenor, and the calculatedly innocent "Mr. Telephone Man." All for Love takes the same tack, though less successfully; "Count Me Out" comes across as a "Cool It Now" retread, and ballads like "Whispers in Bed" find the group in over its head. Even so, "A Little Bit of Love (Is All It Takes)" boasts one of the Edition's most memorable choruses, while "School" shows how much the quintet has learned about rap.

New Edition suffered its first defection at this point, when Bobby Brown left for a solo career that would eventually turn his flair for hip-hop into massive crossover success. Meanwhile, the group's remaining members went in the opposite direction, delivering an album of doo-wop oldies, Under the Blue Moon. It was a cute idea but a big mistake. Hoping to regain lost ground, the group brought in gruff young soulman Johnny Gill and recruited producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to make Heart Break. Although the disc updates the group's rhythmic base and incorporates many of the ideas Brown exploited, not even songs as strong as "If It Isn't Love" or "Boys to Men" are enough to overcome the clunky conceptualism of the album's let's-pretend-this-is-a-concert presentation.

Heart Break may not have salvaged New Edition's fortunes as a group, but its respective members found themselves well-positioned for personal glory. Bell Biv DeVoe (that is, Ricky Bell, Michael "Biv" Bivins, and Ronnie DeVoe) generated hits as performers and producers, while Tresvant and Gill parlayed their New Edition visibility to solo success. But the public's appetite for New Edition hadn't diminished, so in 1996, the group -- including Brown and Gill -- reunited for Home Again. Although the material was somewhat predictable, the performances (honed by such top-drawer producers as Jam and Lewis, Jermaine Dupri, and Sean "Puffy" Combs) were strong enough to ensure the album's success. The comeback came and went, however, and when Brown walked out on the group, New Edition's final chapter appeared to have been written. All the Number Ones and the lamentable slow-jam collection Lost in Love are essentially contract-obligation albums, but Number Ones and Hits are extremely listenable overview of the New Edition saga. (J.D. CONSIDINE)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide