Dope article:
June 20th, 1988 was a landmark day for Black music as a whole. On this date, MCA Records released both Bobby Brown’s
“Don’t Be Cruel” & New Edition’s
“Heart Break” the week after they dropped Guy’s self titled debut album. These two albums helped to forever change not only R&B/Soul/Black music as a whole but the entire landscape of the music industry simultaneously when added to a wave of incredible music that had already been released within the preceding months.
In order to fully understand why this date is culturally significant we must start at the beginning, with the day Bobby Brown was voted out of New Edition in December 1985 amidst mounting pressure from New Edition’s management & production team and the fallout surrounding it all.
At the top of 1986, Bobby Brown was glad to shed himself of New Edition’s squeaky clean image and choose other producers and songwriters other than Vincent Brantley, Rick Timas and Michael Sembello of Jump & Shoot Productions whom their management had recently installed as their musical team after Jheryl Busby of MCA Records went to Roxbury to see Bobby Brown and offered him a solo deal.
The group had discovered they were signed to Jump & Shoot Productions through a production deal by their management (AMI) instead of having a record deal directly with MCA while recording their self titled LP back in 1984 shortly after they won the case that secured their freedom from their old deal with Boston Funk All Star and in-house producer for Tommy Boy Records Arthur Baker’s Streetwise Records under producer/songwriter Maurice Starr of Boston Funk outfit Jonzun Crew.
New Edition released album after album, in hopes of amassing enough money to eventually buy their way out of their management & production contracts with Steven Machat and his partners Rick Smith and Bill Dern of AMI/Jump & Shoot. The hope was to become free agents, then negotiate a new deal directly with MCA Records. However, before that could happen, they had to endure another album under Jump & Shoot’s direction while Bobby Brown who had just signed a solo deal with MCA was free to make material more representative of where he was as an artist.
In early 1986 New Edition recorded a cover of the 50’s Doo Wop hit
“Earth Angel” for the soundtrack to the sequel to
“Karate Kid”. It was initially seen as a one off song before they began working on what would hopefully be their final record making music they weren’t proud of.
“Karate Kid II” opened in theaters in North America on June 20, 1986 and the film became an instant hit.
Peter Cetera made the film’s main theme
“For The Glory Of Love” which was a massive hit but New Edition’s cover of
“Earth Angel” became a crossover hit, slightly missing Billboard’s Top 20 on the Hot 100 charts (stalled at #21). Unfortunately, the success of that song gave New Edition’s producers the idea to make their next LP a concept album full of covers of Doo Wop songs. Let me explain to you all why that was such a bad call at the time.
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