Love was in the air last month at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ as R&B queen Toni Braxton and Philadelphia soul icons Boyz II Men took to the stage alongside groundbreaking vocal group New Edition for the New Edition Way Tour right before Valentine’s Day. The tour kicked off in Oakland, Calif. on Jan. 28 and boasted lots of cross-artist collaboration, and a set that interweaved hits by the iconic groups, their various offshoots, and solo careers for a night that felt like a retrospective of the genre itself.
New Edition changed the landscape of vocal music and is cited by many to be the blueprint for the modern boy band. The group, which consists of original founding members Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, Ronnie DeVoe, Ralph Tresvant, and Bobby Brown, alongside Johnny Gill who replaced Brown in 1987, found success with chart-topping songs like “Mr. Telephone Man,” “Candy Girl,” and “If It Isn’t Love,” and launched several successful solo careers and off-shoot groups including Bell Biv DeVoe, well known for the 1990 classic, “Poison.” The format of the evening was unusual, but welcome.
The show kicked off with “We Going Out Tonight,” a song written specifically for the evening that featured all three acts performing together. The artists eschewed traditional full, consecutive sets — instead interweaving songs by each artist throughout the night — giving latecomers the opportunity to see all the performers. The roughly 40-song, 3-hour show included too many hits to name, including “I’ll Make Love to You,” and “End of the Road” by Boyz II Men, “He Wasn’t Man Enough” and “Un-Break my Heart” by Toni Braxton, and a slew of tunes by New Edition and their members including Brown’s “Every Little Step,” Gill’s “Rub You the Right Way,” and Tresvant’s “Sensitivity.”
The joy on the faces of audience members that ranged in age and cultural backgrounds as they sang at the top of their lungs to hit after hit was unmistakable. “This is history,” Gill told the audience to thunderous applause. The event is presented by the Black Promoters Collective (BPC), “a collating of six of the nation’s top independent concert promotion and event companies,” as described on their website. The group is “rooted in cultural integrity and social consciousness.”
Stay up to date with BPC at blackpromoterscollective.com and keep up with New Edition on Instagram @NewEdition