Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky and Mike–and Ralph and Johnny have embarked on the highly-anticipated Legacy Tour that kicked off March 9 in Columbia, South Carolina, will cover 23 cities and ends in Tampa April 30. This tour is monumental for New Edition and its dedicated fanbase. Legacy celebrates 40 years since New Edition dropped their debut album Candy Girl July 19, 1983. The group has faced challenges in their 40-year run and have overcome many of the obstacles mega-entertainers tend to experience, including breakups, egos, coming to fisticuffs. However, through unconditional love and brotherhood, NE has stood the test of time. Four decades later, we get to indulge ourselves in NE ‘s evolution, maturity and excellence. MADAMENOIRE caught up with New Edition during an Atlanta-based rehearsal to chop it out about all things Legacy and R&B.
Source: Courtesy of Ida Harris / harris
MADAMENOIRE: First, I want to say thank you. Thank you all for being here. Thank you all for being New Edition. Thank you for 40 years. Admittedly, I’m fan-girling right now, no matter how composed I look and appear. I’m definitely an NE 4-lifer and so, here we are … 1983 to 2023. That’s 40 years. I mean, like, this is Black History. Y’all are like my generation Temptations. I wonder if y’all ever considered yourselves in that way. You know, Temptations is a big deal.
Do you consider yourselves a big deal.
Ronnie DeVoe: I think after 40 years, you know, it’s finally becoming a consideration of ours. It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears for us to get to the point where we felt like we belong in this tribe that we’ve always been trying to make sure we stamped ourselves as a part of. But yeah, you know, The temptations, The Jacksons, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, you know.
MN: I mean, yeah, y’all stand on crazy shoulders, right?
Ronnie: We’ve done some things that a lot of those groups didn’t even get the chance to … as far as the depth of our group. Right. New addition is one thing, but each individual has just as much success, if not more outside of an audition.
MN: So absolutely. Amazing. Wu-Tang copied y’all. So y’all are about to embark on the legacy tour. How does the legacy tour speak to the legacy?
Ricky Bell: I think, for one, there’s many sides of it, but for one musically, just being able to tell our story, from the timeline from AD three from Candy Girl, all the way up until our last album and how we perform those songs today. Seeing the reaction that we get from the audience of performing a song that’s 30 years old, and they’re screaming just like it, it just came out. Back in 1983. So, you know, for me, like, you know, a lot of times we talk about, you know, doing new music and doing stuff like that, but I think mostly like our fans, they just want to hear what they already love.
I know all the words. I’m telling y’all. I know all the words. How will The Legacy Tour differ from say like The Culture Tour, which was the biggest selling new edition tour? How will it differ? Y’all been on like mad tours, how will this tour different?
Michael Bivins: I mean, what hasn’t happened yet? Of course. It’s interesting what we’re going through to get to the first show. So, it’s already different. There’s different obstacles. There are different things that have occurred since we’ve been here. We’re finding the wisdom of the coach until is helping us jump the hurdles that we face with the legacy tool. I like so that’s, that’s the first thing. Normally when there’s hurdles, years ago, you know, we all might have been in different spaces. So, even being able to connect with your brother was more like a distance. But now it’s like, you know where you at where we don’t when we working out when we eat it was we’re still together as a group, those outside forces has no way to get inside. Right. So, I think the legacy tour is going to be about wisdom. It’s definitely gotten to come together. Probably in the 12th hour, due to all of the work and pieces we happen to deal with–the wardrobe and production. It’s a lot of things happening in the last minute, but I think our 40-year experience will always be there when house lights go down and the microphones turn on.
You talked about wardrobe. I was at the Essence performance. Y’all switched it up quite a bit. How involved are y’all in picking these clothes?
Johnny Gill: It’s honestly this man right here.
Mike: Argumentative. They might be mad at it sleeve. I’m like, “Oh, so this what we dealt with?”
The other thing I’m curious about, because I’ve been to a couple of shows, right? And the way y’all come together to rescue one another, right? You know, Bob, kind of, you know, start getting out of breath a little bit. Johnny will swing in and scoop it up, how much of that is performance?
Bobby Brown: All of that performance. Yeah. I realize sometimes, you know, I’m the baby of the group it gets rough up there on stage with the lights and the dance steps and, and you know, just, you know, the energy, the energy that you’re feeling that you want to that you want to release to the audience, sometimes, you know, gets the best of you, and just adrenaline trying to push, you realize that, you know, you’re 54 and your legs don’t work. You just gotta push harder.
That’s not just you, that’s some of us in the crowd, too.
Johnny: And I was gonna say on top of that, when you look at a basketball team, or football team, when you’ve been playing on a team together for a long time, you know, where everybody’s gonna be, you know, somebody cuts me off later, when you have somebody who’s gonna have to pick up the slack of do. So, we just, you can kind of see what’s happening, what we need to do. And we were just able to just immediately identify that to step in and do what we have to do, collectively. Okay.
I’m not the only person that wants to know, I got a couple of questions that came from others about how y’all put the songs together. Who’s picking? How does it go down?
I was disappointed, because I didn’t get to hear “Smile” at the Essence fest.
Mike: That was that was an argument of moment. The sequencing. You know, we did the tour. Then we did. Kentucky Derby. You know, Ron loves Aruba. But it seemed like when we got to Essence we knew we were going on late and we couldn’t re-shuffle some things within the sequence that could have smacked a little difference because our time on stage at the Essence was shorter than the culture tour. And we felt as though it was bang, bang, bang, bang and we was within that show trying to find that pocket and some things that should have been in there wasn’t and some things that should have been heard earlier came a little later you know Essence, they want to go get drunk. They don’t see all these acts. They can’t wait. So, they waiting to see how you’re gonna come. So, we came in. We did what we do, but we felt like in the dressing room if we do it all over again. We would have done what you asked us. We wouldn’t have re-shuffled some of the songs.
So, Johnny …
Johnny: I ain’t do it.
You did it. You did it. Absolutely did it. When I was introduced to New Edition as a young girl you know, I had thoughts where I’m in love with everybody, but when you entered the group, you added a different sound and a different level of maturity. My childhood years, right? When you entered the group, I feel like I grew up with y’all. I went from a girl to a woman. And I felt like you sexualized some of that energy, you know?
Johnny: I’m reading between the lines, you love them. But when I came in you never knew love, like that. Oh shucky baby now. I gotta watch myself.
Mike: Very humbled guy. You see what we live with, right.
I got the visual from watching the biopic and most people did, too. But what was it like to grow up with each other? Just like if you if each of you could give me like one word of what was it like to grow up? And I know, you’re still growing up with each other, but one word, what was it like to grow up with one another?
Ronnie: Man, for me, I would say education. Right, like just looking at each one of my guys. And you know, where their strengths were, you know, and even where some of their weaknesses were. We kind of plugged in, like you said earlier in the interview, it’s been a very informative and educational process, I’ve picked up something amazing from each and every one of these guys, including myself. So that’s the first thing that came to mind.
Bobby: For me, it would probably be passion. Because we, we do this with all love, you know, love for the craft, love and respect for the, you know, the building of what, what we did. Passion for me would be it.
Ricky: I guess I’m gonna mix for me, when we were younger. You know, all I could remember was just having fun. You know, it was everything was exciting. Even the rehearsals were exciting. Now that we’re older and more mature, knowing how far we’ve come and seeing so many acts come and go. It’s just gratitude for me.
Mike: Well, I love ball. So, I started and I had the ball in my hand 95 percent of the time. I felt like within New Edition. I just felt like everybody was better. So, I kind of felt like a kid on the bench.
Johnny: And I came late, but at the end of the day, still allows a young whippersnapper growing and coming together with them, and just the whole connection with them was just taken on having more brothers was valuable to me, and I enjoyed it. And I really appreciate it and more than anything, it really helped me in so many ways, you know, because people won’t understand when you are Solarz you’re coming into a group. My attitude was simply about the fact of understanding, I knew that this also would help bring balance because it’s one thing you have to be out fine. So, another thing when you’re playing in a team and you have a position you have to play, and it brings great balance. And that’s what I got out of this and what was more valuable to me than anything coming in here and growing, growing together with these guys.
Is R&B dead because that’s been floating around these days and in social media. Is R&B dead?
Johnny: Absolutely not going looking out buildings when you see us perform and see what happens. And see how many people that are coming out that still have a love and interest for absolutely it hasn’t it hasn’t died. Has music and the industry change? Absolutely. But you know, I don’t think R&B could ever die because what’s been written in stone can’t be erased. And when you look at the greats, you know, goes all the way back to the 40s 50s and 60s on down. You can’t erase that that’s you know, it’s a part of our life. Culture a part of our history that can’t be raised and I don’t think you can R&B can ever die.
Mike: And honestly Drake is R&B . The future is G and hip hop R&B Melody now, they’re not even boom, boom, bap a boom, boom bap. They’re not even spitting no more that kind of moving through those verses, and the melodic R&B form. 50 did it, JaRule did it? And Drake mastered it. That’s R&B . That’s why some rappers it’s hard to call him in their top five, because they say he’s not spitting. But what he’s doing is selling and he’s selling R&B.
Great perspective. Great perspective. So, we got legacy come in, kicking off in March. Well, what’s after the legacy? For each of you.
Bobby: Rest. Vacation.
Johnny: I was hoping to get a big game commercial. What’s gonna happen with that?
Mike: Because we know what we’re gonna do after I think, you know, family’s gonna be great, because we’re gonna go back to that, but this has been good for us. You know, it’s helped us in so many ways. Where each man is going through. You don’t learn that when you’re separated, unless you pick up the phone. But when you’re around someone every day, and they’re going off to the corner to call the way for checking on mama or checking on yourself. You tend to have an ear hustle. Is it like, Yo, you’re good? You’re right, you. You wouldn’t know that if it’s not there. So, I’m not looking forward to going home. Because I don’t want us to be home too long. And this is the first time and I say a long time we ever did a double up in the same year. Right? You know, we did what like January, February, March, right? Then we announced what remember? Yeah, yeah. So even for our fans, they like Oh, snap they again. So, it is that consistency is legacy.
Let me let me tell you something. It never gets old. Like, I’m gonna go to every show. I’m not the only one. This this New Edition experience never gets old. It never plays out. He talked about it helping y’all. But y’all certainly have helped us. I want to thank y’all. I hope y’all are really proud of yourselves.
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