Boyz II Men

In 1985, Nate and a friend started a group. The group originally had actually five members. I formed the group along with a gentlemen by the name of Marc Nelson, who was the fifth vocalist. He continued on by telling how the groups members where chosen. I first asked Wanya to join the group, and then he and I became much closer. At first, Wan like he was really quiet, but once he was placed in the right spot, he became more talkative. Next, I picked up Shawn. Up until Shawn got the solo in the choir, he was always quiet. After that, he opened up and people started talking about him and to him much more than ever before. Nate didn’t bring Michael into the group until two weeks later.I really hadn't hand placed Mike into the group, like I had done with Wan and Shawn. Mike was in the bathroom one day, and Shawn, Wan and myself were all singing a song called 'Can You Stand The Rain', by New Edition. We liked singing there because the acoustics were great. Mike happened to add a bass part to the song that sounded good to us. When he asked to join the group, we made him follow us around and keep singing that note, until he grew on us. That's why here's here.

The members of the group would change constantly Nate recalls. We had a lot of different people in the group. At that time, there was about five people in the group, and then as the years went on and things, changed, every year someone would like, either leave the group for there own reason or sometimes we would put people in the group that were seniors and they would graduate and go to college and so and so and so and so, and then every year we would put new people in the group. Some years there would be four members, three members, six members, two members. Whatever. At first it was me and a guy named Mark, and then we had three other people we put in the group, and those three graduated and went to college. Then we put Wanya in, and then we picked up Shawn and then Mike, and then the other guy that was in the group decided he wanted to be a solo artist, so, these are the four that stayed together."

Every year a local radiostation in Philadelphia holds a concert. In March of '89, we attended a concert thrown by a Philly radio station called Power 99FM, it was hosted by Bell Biv DeVoe Mike said. The group wanted to sneak backstageiin hopes of finding Michael Bivins the leader of Bell Biv DeVoe,We wanted the groups leader Michael Bivins to hear us sing, and maybe help us get a record deal. Mike said. So determined to get backstage the group some how used only one backstage pass to sneek all four of them inside.We went to the concert and hung around the backstage door. This lady we saw had a lot of backstage passes around her neck, but could only give us one.We passed it back and forth until everyone got backstage he confessed. As soon as we got back there, Michael Bivins was just coming off the stage, and we asked him if we could sing for him. After hearing us sing one of our favorite songs, 'Can You Stand The Rain' a cappella, he was so impressed that he gave me his business card and told Nate to call him.We talked to Michael for almost a year and a half before we actually did anything, Nate recalls, A lot of people where like ya'll ain't got no record deal, but they where wrong

. After signing to Michael's record company Biv Entertainment he got the group a contract with Motown Records, and the rest is history. There debut album has sold over seven million copy's, winning over 15 different awards including: three Grammy's, three American Music Awards, five Soul Train Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, two MTV Awards, and one World Music Award. In '93 they broke Elvis's long standing record of 13 weeks at number one, with there song End Of The Road. But in '94 the boyz topped themselves with there song Ill Make Love To You beating there own record and staying for 14 consecutive weeks. But there latest accomplishment has been with One Sweet Day a duet with Mariah Carey, lasting 16 weeks at number 1, and yet again broken there own record and set another obstacle to over come for the next album.

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