K-CI: When I heard that, I was like, Yeah, it's time. I'm not racist but how can you say a white singer is being labeled as the most soulful singer out right now? You know who I'm talking about, right? The man who did something with Mary. Did y'all encounter resistance like that? K-CI: We never got that because we came into the game with the soulful, black or whatever you wanna call it. I remember an interview with an R&B singer in the early 2000s where he complained that labels thought his music was "too black" to market. We ain't try to conform or reform ourselves to what was standard of R&B. Is it because we're too black or what? We stay true to ourselves. Jodeci, as many records as we've sold, we've never been invited to the Grammys.
You see a guy with his pants hanging down, he's got a skully, and you scared cause he's black. DALVIN: Not to discredit anybody but that's the ignorance of not knowing.
To celebrate its release, we talked about why Jodeci was put on pause all those years ago, and why it's finally time to start again.ĭo you ever feel like you get pigeonholed as being a certain type of artist, because when people think about Jodeci, they think about the leather, the black clothes, the 'thugs' of R&B? MR. In March, the group released The Past, The Present, The Future, the first Jodeci album in two decades. Drake's tapped old Jodeci songs for samples on more than one occasion. And some 20 years after their vanishing, artists from Raheem DeVaughn to Justin Bieber continue to express a deep admiration. "All My Life" and, eventually, five albums, but adoring fans never let go of their Jodeci obsession. K-Ci and JoJo splintered off as a duo in 1997, producing hit single Dalvin held down production duties for the group, founded the Swing Mob, a collective responsible for the discovery of musical geniuses like Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and Static Major.Īs a group, Jodeci would go on to release three critically-acclaimed album in the '90s, before disappearing from the limelight. The look, along with the streetwise soul found in songs like "Cry 4 U" and "Feenin" (as well as a few run-ins with the law) made them the antithesis to good-guy personas of then-peaking R&B superstars Boyz II Men. Heavy D introduced Jodeci to Uptown founder Andre Harrell, who signed them after they sang in his office, and handed them off to his then-protégé Puff Daddy, who outfitted the group in dark shades and coordinating leather ensembles. Jodeci were once known as the "bad boys of R&B," notable particularly because they were actuallyīoys at the time, breaking out as teenagers in 1991 with their debut album and its title ballad, "Forever My Lady." Natives of North Carolina, they were discovered by Heavy D, who overheard their demo when an A&R at Uptown was in the process of passing on them. and doesn't travel this far due to an anxiety for flying, can be seen in some more recent pictures on internet sporting a giant tattoo on the right side of his face. Devante, who K-Ci and Dalvin tell me is home in L.A. YouTube video of the radio show they'd recorded earlier that morning, it appears that JoJo, who decided to sit this afternoon's proceedings out, looks every bit the grandfather he'd told the radio crew he relishes being, unashamed of his graying sideburns. Dalvin were both wearing sunglasses indoors, Dalvin looked far more pedestrian: hatless in a forest green peacoat, dark fitted denim, and a pair of Lebron James' signature model Nikes. K-Ci was wearing head-to-toe black, including the leather bike jacket, backwards cap, and Timberland Super Boots signature to the Jodeci look he looked like he'd wandered off set from a video shoot. As they sat across from me, being tended to by a makeup artist, I wondered the very thing I had asked myself countless times over the years: what happened? Dalvin)-but only half of either pairing, just K-Ci and Mr. Jodeci is comprised of two sets of brothers-Cedric and Joel Hailey (also known as K-Ci and JoJo) and Donald and Dalvin Degrate (also known as DeVante Swing and Mr.
In 2015, there is one question at the crux of any Jodeci interview, and as soon as the group arrived at The FADER's New York office in March, I knew I wasn't going to get a definitive answer.
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