New Edition was formed in 1978 in Roxbury’s Orchard Park Projects in Boston, Massachusetts, by childhood friends Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, and Bobby Brown, who began singing together while still in elementary school. They later added Ralph Tresvant as a fourth member, and later Ronnie DeVoe.
They were discovered by producer Maurice Starr, who signed them to his Streetwise label in the hopes of generating a Jackson 5 phenomenon for the 1980s. New Edition’s early Jackson 5-influenced material established them as forerunners of two generations of teen pop music.
After making some noise on the charts with the singles ‘Candy Girl’, ‘Is This The End’, and ‘Popcorn Love’ in 1983, New Edition had an acrimonious split with Starr in 1984.
‘Cool It Now’, the first single from New Edition’s eponymous second album came to be after producers Vincent Brantley and Rick Timas were so convinced that the song was a fit for the group, that they cornered Jheryl Busby, then vice-president of the black music division of MCA Records, at a Popeye’s Chicken in Los Angeles to play him the demo. The ploy worked, and the producers’ instincts proved correct — Cool It Now was a runaway success. The song topped the Hot Black Singles chart in September 1984, eventually peaking at Number 4 in January 1985 on the Billboard Hot 100.
In the video for Cool It Now, Ralph Tresvant plays a typical teenage boy pining for a pretty young lady in his neighbourhood. Meanwhile, his friends advise him to ‘cool it’, and not to fall too hard for the girl. By the end of the video, all of the group’s members, including Ralph, have found girls of their own.
You can check out the video below:
So much for following your own advice, huh? Anyway, New Edition established a lot of the groundwork for the hip-hop/R&B fusion known as New Jack Swing as they matured and progressed. In fact, after New Edition first disbanded in 1989, every member of the group went on to have at least some success as part of the New Jack movement.
If you’re wanting to keep up with the group, you can check them out on Instagram, @newedition.
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