Home Again (album)

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New Edition chronology
Home Again

Studio album by New Edition
Released	September 10, 1996
Recorded	1996
Genre	R&B/soul/urban contemporary
Length	61:11
Label	MCA
Producer(s)	Sean "Puffy" Combs, Jermaine Dupri, Silky, Carl-So-Lowe, Gerald Levert, Chucky Thompson, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis
Heart Break (1988)	Home Again (1996)	One Love (2004)

Home Again is an album released by American R&B group New Edition on the MCA label in 1996. This was the group's first new album in eight years after the group split to forge solo careers and the first new album to feature original member Bobby Brown in the lineup some ten years after his initial split from the band to begin his successful solo career.

1 Overview
- 1.1 History
- 1.2 Release and reaction
2 Tracklisting
3 Credits

[edit] Overview

[edit] History

After the successful release of their 1988 album, Heart Break, the lineup of New Edition - lead singers Ralph Tresvant and Johnny Gill, secondary lead singer Ricky Bell and background singers Ronnie DeVoe and Michael Bivins - decided to put the group on hiatus, except for a surprise reunion of all six New Edition members performing at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1990, as they all ventured into solo careers and other groups. Bell, Bivins and DeVoe, in turn, were inspired by producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis to form their own group. As BBD, the trio's mixture of hip-hop, pop and soul was a confectious blend helping to give the group multi-platinum success with the album, Poison, which sold over three million copies and spawned the top ten hits "Poison", "Do Me" and "I Thought It Was Me (BBD)". Meanwhile, Gill, who had had a solo career before joining New Edition, revived it with the release of his first album with Motown. The self-titled album also gave Gill unprecedented success with two of the singles, "Rub You the Right Way" and "My, My, My" becoming top ten pop hits. Ralph Tresvant, who was once billed as the best kid vocalist on the side of the younger Michael Jackson, released his long-awaited solo album in 1991. The self-titled collection also gave Tresvant unprecedented solo success with the success of singles "Sensitivity", which reached the top ten on the pop charts, and subsequent follow-ups such as "Stone Cold Gentleman" and "Do What I Gotta Do". In the mix, Bobby Brown, whose 1988 album, Don't Be Cruel, had sold over eight million copies alone in America, continued his success into the 1990s with the triple-platinum Bobby in 1992. By this point, the group were as known for their solo ventures as they were as New Edition. While the group had mentioned notion of doing a new album, years passed before an album could be made leaving fans to wonder if their 1988 album, Heart Break, was in fact the group's swan song.

By 1996, however, many of NE's subsequent solo projects weren't as successful as their first ventures with only Johnny Gill maintaining a successful solo career joining the ranks of Gerald Levert, Keith Sweat and Babyface as one of the few successful smooth R&B male artists in the 1990s. But the year was also notable for Brown, who was now gaining more attention not for his music but for his troubling marriage to pop diva Whitney Houston and troubles with the law including a publicized car crash where a flustered Brown was arrested on a DUI charge. Despite Brown's notoriety and worldwide tabloid magazines deeming the singer as "Mr. Whitney Houston" and "a bad boy R&B singer", his old friends in New Edition decided to bring him back in the group, which Brown agreed to. Their upcoming album would become Brown's first new album with the group since he was voted out of the group in early 1986.

[edit] Release and reaction

New Edition's first new album in eight years, Home Again, was finally released in September 1996. Their first album as a sextet and billed now as an R&B supergroup, Home Again was hugely successful upon its release debuting at number one on both the Billboard Top 200 and the Top R&B/Hip-Hop album chart. The first single, "Hit Me Off", in particular, hit number one on the R&B chart and reached number six on the pop chart. The song featured leads from all six members in terms of their vocals (Brown, Bell, Gill and Tresvant) and rapping (Bivins and DeVoe). Another top ten, "I'm Still in Love With You", featured leads from Bell, Brown and Tresvant. Other hits include the Brown-led "You Don't Have to Worry" and "One More Day". Eventually selling over two million copies, it briefly returned the group to the top of the music world together again. Their reunion, however, was tainted by some of the members' egos, in particular of Bobby Brown's. Feeling like he didn't belong in the group, group members would say years later in a documentary that Brown "was like a cancer and it spread like a tumor" and that the money Brown was making as both a solo act and as Whitney Houston's husband was insurmontable and that he felt that he was being paid "peanuts" with the group. Eventually tension boiled over while the group were on tour. After one night when Brown extended his solo act, band member Ronnie DeVoe, group member Michael Bivins states, went onstage to confront Brown to get out of the stage. Brown responded by dropping his microphone and instigating a fight with DeVoe, that eventually led to both members' security guards confronting each other, gun play was brought in and the concert was halted. Brown later told interviewers in the same documentary that he was "high" during that period and that he was "intoxicated in many other ways" and apologized for his actions towards his band mates saying to the band that he "didn't know how (they) put up with (him)". Group member Michael Bivins said that the members of the group were on "some rock & roll bullshit". Bivins and Brown left the tour early while DeVoe, Bell, Gill and Tresvant finished out the rest of the tour ending a period Ricky Bell said "was the worst I've experienced in show business". After this album, New Edition once again took a break from each other with Gill continuing his successful post-NE career fronting another supergroup, LSG, which featured fellow singers Keith Sweat and Gerald Levert while Bell released his first solo album, DeVoe started a career investing in real estate, Bivins continued his producing company mentoring acts off his own label, Biv 10, and Brown & Tresvant continuing their own solo careers.