Home Again (album)

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Home Again
Home Again cover
Studio album by New Edition
Released September 10, 1996
Recorded 1996
Genre R&B/Pop
Length 61:11
Label MCA
Producer(s) Sean "Puffy" Combs, Jermaine Dupri, Silky, Carl-So-Lowe, Gerald Levert, Chucky Thompson, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis
New Edition chronology
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.

Contents

[edit] Overview

[edit] History

After the successful 1988 album, Heart Break, the lineup of New Edition: Ralph Tresvant, Johnny Gill, Ricky Bell, Ronnie DeVoe ,and Michael Bivins - decided to put the group on hiatus in order to peruse separate interests. With the exception of a surprise reunion of all six New Edition members performing at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1990, and song and music video for Bell Biv Devoe's 1991 hit "Word to the Mutha" (which featured Brown, Gill, and Tresvant), the group largely went their separate ways for the first half of the 1990s.

Upon the advice of producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Bell, Bivins and DeVoe formed their own trio, Bell Biv Devoe. Their album Poison, released in 1990, sold over three million copies. The same year, Johnny Gill—who had had a solo career before joining New Edition—revived it his multi-platinum self-titled album. Also in 1990, Ralph Tresvant released his long-awaited solo debut album, which too went multi-platinum. In the mix, Bobby Brown, whose 1988 album, Don't Be Cruel, had sold over eight million copies, continued his success with the triple-platinum Bobby album in 1992. By this point, the group members were becoming as known for their side projects as they were as New Edition. Though when pressed by fans and journalists, the now fragmented band mates intermittently assured that they had planned to reunite to record another New Edition album, years passed before such plans were put into action, leaving their fans to wonder if their 1988 album, Heart Break, was in fact the group's swan song.

By 1995, however, many of New Edition's subsequent solo projects weren't as successful as their first ventures. The year, meanwhile, had been notable for Bobby Brown—who'd gained more media attention not for his music, but for his tumultuous marriage to Whitney Houston, and various troubles with the law. The same year, Bell, Bivens, Devoe, Gill, and Tresvant decided to come together and begin production on the long awaited, long-promised sixth New Edition album. Despite his notorious reputation and worldwide tabloid fodder, the group invited Brown (who hadn't been featured on a New Edition album since 1985's All For Love) to join them, to which he agreed.

[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. After eight years, New Edition minus Brown released a comeback album called One Love.

[edit] Tracklisting

  1. "Oh, Yeah, It Feels So Good" (Bell/DeVoe/Harris/Lewis) (6:02)
  2. "Hit Me Off" (Bingham/Bivins/DeVoe/Dyson/Silky) (4:21)
  3. "You Don't Have to Worry" (Combs/Jones/Keith/Parker/Scandrick/Thompson) (4:42)
  4. "Tighten It Up" (Bell/Carl-So-Lowe/Dee/DeVoe/Dupri) (4:00)
  5. "Shop Around" (Bivins/Carl-So-Lowe/Dupri/Gill/Tresvant) (3:25)
  6. "Hear Me Out" (Bingham/Bivins/Washington) (5:12)
  7. "Something About You" (Harris/Lewis) (4:48)
  8. "Try Again" (Combs/Frierson/Thompson) (4:24)
  9. "How Do You Like Your Love Served" (LeVert/Nicholas) (5:32)
  10. "One More Day" (Harris/Lewis) (5:03)
  11. "I'm Still in Love With You" (Harris/Lewis) (4:39)
  12. "Thank You (The J.G. Interlude) (Gill) (2:39)
  13. "Home Again" (Harris/Lewis) (6:24)

[edit] Credits

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