DECONSTRUCTING BOBBY: The Story of Modern R&B's Lost Album

In 1988, Don’t Be Cruel hit the record industry like Halley’s Comet, and for a brief moment in time Bobby Brown was R&B’s new king. Cruel's success established the former New Edition member as a viable commercial act. The album followed in the footsteps of  Michael Jackson’s trilogy of ground-breaking long players Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad—albums that rocked back to back with no filler. 

Like Off The Wall, Cruel was Brown’s triumphant coming-out party. Just as Thriller was Jackson’s crowning moment, Cruel was Brown’s greatest success, catapulting him into a global superstar and Jackson’s possible heir apparent.

 While all roads leading to Jackson-like comparisons seem far fetched in 2014, twenty-six years ago, Brown’s career was off to a great start. Cruel bested producer Quincy Jones’ attempt to craft a tougher sound for Bad.  The commercial appeal of the third installment of their historic partnership was undisputed. Bad spun off five straight number one hits---an industry first.

 Mostly self penned and billed as Jackson's tour-de-force, rumored collaborations with Run-D.M.C. and Prince never materialized, altering Bad's game-changing potential to one-up Thriller. 

                                                             

 When  Cruel arrived in the summer of '88, Black music was changing. A younger audience raised on hip hop gravitated to a new kind of R&B void of traditional elements and conceptual artistic expression of the past. For all of Bad's greatness in '87---by '88 the album seemed slightly behind the times.

Producers LA &Babyface gave Brown a slick new sound.

Edgier songs like Bad and Dirty Diana were no match for LA & Babyface’s title track Don’t Be Cruel, capturing the Brown Bomber’s b-boy energy and potent raps (penned by Nice and Smooth’s Smooth Bee) dismissing gold diggers and fake females unworthy of his love.

 A decade and a half prior, Philly Soul gem Be For Real found a twenty-one year Teddy Pendergrass admonishing a shallow social climber with wisdom beyond his years. Brown updates the formula with slick lines like "Although I want you bad/I can let you go/cause there's alotta girls out there that won't say no." In a single moment, Brown forged rap's bravado and R&B's tenderness, shattering the champagne-and-roses glass ceiling of smooth urban soul.

New Jack Swing King Teddy Riley's productions complimented Brown's swagger perfectly.

 Follow-up single and Teddy Riley-produced anthem My was a game changer and Brown's signature song. Bearing a close resemblance to R&B trio The Reddings' 1980 Remote Control, Prerogative's layered groove retired the thumping 808 drums associated with Loose Ends and the SOS Band. A new kind of singer would emerge---less technically sound but effective enough to harness Riley's new style with power and passion. Smooth falsetto and tenor vocals were supplanted by churchy riffs.  Steve Arrington and Teddy Pendergrass were back with a vengeance.

 

 


Prerogative's sound was defined by writer Barry Michael Cooper as the new sound of young America. He even gave it a name: New Jack Swing. Where R&B's previous generation of stars were subject to the restrictions of record labels and producers shackling their creativity, Brown made it known he was going to do it his way.

 It bodied the genteel romantic aesthetic of Luther Vandross and Peabo Bryson that dominated R&B to that point. Veteran crooners like Alexander O’Neal, Teddy Pendergrass and Freddie Jackson hung tough but as Roni, Rock Wit’cha, and Every Little Step pushed the album past seven million in sales worldwide, the gap between the two schools of black music was widening to the point that soul music's greatest voices were placed in "old school"  and "classic" categories before they hit 40. To remain contemporary, soul singer Al Green was rocking New Jack beats and James Ingram was doing the running man in his music videos. 

 

 During a time when budgets for R&B albums were less extravagant than their pop counterparts, MCA black music execs Jheryl Busby and Louil Silas pulled out all stops, tapping the hottest producers to work on Don’t Be Cruel. Longtime Brown supporters from the New Edition days, they were responsible for establishing MCA as the place for urban music in the late eighties and nineties.

Legendary MCA A&R man Louil Silas (right)

R&B flourished under MCA president Jheryl Busby's watch.

                   


Keith Sweat’s Make It Last Forever and Al B. Sure's  In Effect Mode were first out the gate delivering this new kind of R&B that rocked the streets and in the bedroom turn up the heat. When Cruel dropped, Bobby briefly languished in the shadows of Sweat and Sure’s star power until the album became so huge that he went from supporting opening act to concert headliner overnight.

 Brown was so popular that for a time, Cruel eclipsed all of the sales of Make It Last Forever, In Effect Mode, seminal New Jack Swing album Guy and his former band mates’ NE Heartbreak album combined. Despite Don’t Be Cruel’s critical and commercial success, it suffered the same fate as Off The Wall, winning a single Grammy in the Best Male R&B Category but unrecognized as a pop music contender by a industry accustomed to Can’t Slow Down, Whitney, Purple Rain, Sign O’ the Times and Bad instead of the swaggering New Jack Swing that was conquering the music industry the same way disco did in the seventies. Cruel’s influence was still felt, reaching the top spot on the R&B and pop charts forcing critics to reevaluate urban music’s power and influence. It was also a catalyst for MJ to rethink his own musical direction for his next release.

               When the Bobby album arrived in the summer of ’92, LA and Babyface and Riley were back at the helm and expectations were high. By this time the prolific La' Face team parlayed their string of hits into a joint venture label deal launching the career of future mega star Toni Braxton and Riley was fresh off his successful collaboration with Michael Jackson. Creative differences over the recording process and single choices did little to undermine the quality of the record. While Cruel reflected Brown’s creative freedom and unbridled energy, Bobby was more ambitious.

Album opener Humpin' Around  was a New Jack nod to the Emotions’ '70's classic Don’t Ask My Neighbor, with Brown back in form brushing off the haters and naysayers.

 Hot on its heels, Riley’s Two Can Play That Game ups the ante capturing the chemistry Brown and Riley displayed on My Prerogative. While Brown’s energy and bravado are the main event, the undercard of Riley and LaFace’s productions go blow for blow in a sonic freestyle thanks to perfect album sequencing and Brown’s ability to handle up tempo tracks, sexy mid tempo ballads and inspirational anthems with ease.

Channeling the King of Pop’s lyrics of angst and introspection, Riley’s Get Away finds Brown still searching for an oasis away from a world attempting to curb his rebellious spirit, a theme introduced in Prerogative.

LA & Face's Good Enough captured the elements that endeared  Brown to his female audience.

While LA & Face's productions dominated Don't Be Cruel, Teddy Riley's productions formed the bulk of Bobby. Going into the making of Bobby in ’91, Riley was in a creative zone. Four years earlier, he transformed the sound of black music becoming the most influential producer of his era. At the peak of his success, personal tragedy, management issues and group implosions threatened to derail his momentum. Riley crafted seventy five tracks for the Dangerous project, reinvigorating Jackson’s career with the biggest New Jack Swing album ever, selling over 30 million copies.








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Transitioning directly to the Bobby project Riley injected stellar songwriting, catchy hooks and melodies anchored by contributions of longtime songwriting partner Bernard Belle (Let’s Chill and Kissing Game), breezy background vocals from members of defunct Riley girl group Abstrac’ Mary Brown and Marsha McClurkin, rounded out by distinct harmonies of brother in-law Omar Chandler (Rob Base’s Joy and Pain) and future Blackstreet members Levi Little, Chauncey Hannibal and Joseph Stonestreet giving the album a more fuller and richer sound.

   At the time of Bobby’s release, Soundscan had become the liberating force  in the music business. Tracking sales performances of musical genres integrated the Billboard Hot 100 to the point where  country singer Garth Brooks became a rock star, and a N.W.A' s Efil4zaggin (read back to front) was the number one pop album in the country.

Bobby would go double platinum, a commercial triumph for any other artist but for Brown it was a  commercial disappointment that suffered the fate of Walking With A Panther, Tougher Than Leather and Bad, huge selling albums that fell short of public expectations, timing  and changing tastes. Rumors surfaced that label politics favored the La’Face tracks as lead singles over Riley’s hampering the album’s success. Critics panned the album's length and remixes for later singles lacked the potency of the original tracks that were strong potential singles in their own right. Also missing were the electrifying live onstage performances that captured Brown's raw intensity. Instead, Brown adapted the posture of a hardcore rapper pacing the stage while a group of background dancers executed elaborate routines behind him.

As Bobby finally made the slow climb to number one for two nonconsecutive weeks, the year's hottest R&B album, What’s The 411  marked the introduction of hip hop soul, building on Riley’s textured percussive rhythms by adding dusty hip hop samples and drum loops associated with rap records.

Hip hop soul stripped away the dance element, a key weapon in the Brown arsenal slowing the music  down to accommodate the head-nod litmus test that now confirmed a hot song instead of the hyper dance floor gymnastics of the New Jack Swing days.

 The attraction to high wattage showmanship waned to a low flicker in favor of a new component that drew fans to hip hop soul artists: the back story-- the more tumultuous, the better. Absolute contemporaries, Blige and Brown both overcame rough and tumble lives in the Orchard Park and Schlobohm housing projects of Roxbury and Yonkers to achieve instant stardom. Creative muse Sean "Puffy" Combs was to Blige what Riley was to Brown right down to the autobiographical accounts woven into their songs.

Blige would one-up Prerogative with 411 and My Life, her personal musical diary confirming her coronation as the Queen of Hip Hop Soul. As a result, Blige's star rose as Brown's quickly descended, a casualty of modern R&B's penchant for degarding older stars in favor of newer ones.
 

Brown’s personal life would overshadow his musical accomplishments regulating him to the status of R&B footnote and one hit wonder instead of the reference point for a generation of future stars: The salacious choreography of Ginuwine. R. Kelly's flirtation with the" R&B thug" persona. The flair and showmanship of Ne-Yo, Usher, Chris Brown and Justin Timberlake. The rugged sex appeal of Jaheim and the heartthrob status of Trey Songz. While Michael Jackson is rightfully cited as the inspiration that musical dreams were made of, it was Brown who made that vision for future generations of top billers much more clear. The reality is that the My Way, Justified, Here I Stand and Chris Brown albums owe allegiance to the '88's groundbreaking Don't Be Cruel and its long forgotten follow up album.

 

Brown's impact wasn't just limited to music. He was among the first wave of black superstars who brought a new look and alternative to a singular look of African Americans in the media causing light skinned brothers to fall out of favor for decades. Brown's cultural impact was sealed when smooth operator Big Daddy Kane name checked him on his self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness track: "In comes the era of the chocolate types like your Bobby Brown, Aaron Hall and Wesley Snipes."

                                   Check the highlight reel of the Bobby's album's greatest moments:

One More Night's mashup of  the Average White Band's Schoolboy Crush and  James Brown's Funky Drummer is classic New Jack Swing. Reviving a harmony of an obscure R&B gem, Mary Brown and Marsha McClurkin's vocal interplay weave in and out of Brown's lead, lifting him higher and higher before into a climatic staccato nursery rhyme chant lifted from the melody of an '80's obscure club jam. Intricate background vocal arrangements were becoming extinct in modern R&B and to this day but no one quite mastered them like Teddy Riley. Should of been a single.

In the vein of MJ's Remember The Time, Til The End Of Time is a dope  TR production where Brown sheds his bravado and delivers a great performance. Teddy's studio wizardry and Bobby's slow burn vocal are in perfect chemistry complete with a dazzling keyboard solo at the bridge. Another potential single.

Storm Away finds Brown seeking refuge from his troubled past and spreading his creative wings in the process on this inspirational track.

Fresh from the altar, Bobby and (then) new wife Whitney Houston's Something In Common confronted naysayers and critics of their union.Common was the genesis of the high profile collaborations commonplace in today's modern R&B. A dream pairing of two stars at the peak of their creative powers and a triumphant moment of art imitating life before a tragic ending claimed family. The Bobby album's centerpiece.

   Pretty Little Girl features Brown's deeper vocal register on this sexy LA & Babyface reggae track.