Tuneage Tuesday – New Edition Story

 

This week’s Tuneage Tuesday is going to be a bit different.  Last week the New Edition mini series premiered on BET.  Tuesday through Thursday we got to dive into the life and hits of one of the greatest R&B groups ever.  We watched as they were discovered in the OP and as they grew up and navigated the ups and downs of Hollywood.  I tweeted a bit about the mini series and even shared a few snaps, but I wanted to share six thoughts about it here on the blog.  One for each of the group’s members.

 

Why didn’t anyone have a lawyer?  I know that $500 and a BetaMax might have seemed like a lot at that time, but end the end they were screwed because they didn’t get paid again for another few years.  They had hit songs and were still living in government housing and getting free lunch in school.

 

I didn’t know Ricky Bell was strung out like that.  Thank you, Ricky for sharing your truth with us and thank you Elijah for portraying it so well.

 

These guys did an amazing job with the vocal aspect of the movie.  They covered all of those NE songs and Algee, Luke and Elijah gave me chills with how close they matched their voices to Ralph, Johnny and Ricky.  They knocked it out of the park.

 

The rest of the cast was spot on too!  The casting director did a great job with the younger and older versions of the guys.  They were able to get a little boy who had that same “I’ve been here before” look that Bobby Brown has.

 

Speaking of Bobby Brown, I feel like they went a little easy on how wild he was in this mini series.  If his show with Whitney and that terrible Lifetime movie was any indication of how wild Bobby actually got then this mini series was pretty tame.

 

‘Heartbreak’ will always be that album for me.  It was one that I grew up listening (it actually came out the year I was born) and one that I can just put on and listen to from top to bottom on repeat.  It was the soundtrack for many a Saturday morning cleaning session at home and still gets me through a tough day at work.  In fact, I’ve had it on repeat for a few days now.

 

If you didn’t get a chance to catch all three parts of the mini series fret not.  I’m sure BET will be rerunning it ad nauseum through the end of the year.  I think it’s also available onDemand.  I recommend you watching it, especially for the numerous performances in it.