WARNING : EXPLICIT LANGUAGE
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""Silk? Shai? UNV?" DeVante chuckles. "Put that in there. That I laughed. They're just jokes. There are only two powers: us and Boyz II Men."
"There's no comparison," says Dalvin on the subject of BIIM(Boyz ll Men) after a rehearsal at Harlem's Apollo Theatre (the group is preparing for a live BET taping, to be followed by a 10-city club tour in July to benefit Harrell's new Urban Aid Life Beat AIDS awareness project). "We're like light and dark." Or, perhaps, like sex and divine sex. "Don't nobody mack like Jodeci. We're making music that we like. We don't make music to be on every white awards show. Nothing against Boyz II Men-I like them. But I prefer soul music."
The differences, though, run even deeper than that. All four members of Jodeci have been gospel professionals since they were young boys. As members of gospel bands, they traveled the southern revival circuit and cut albums-DeVante and Dalvin with their father, the Rev. Donald DeGrate Sr.; K-Ci and JoJo with their father, Clifford Hailey, known as the Haileys. Folks down South used to call Cedric "K-Ci" Hailey the "Michael Jackson of gospel." Jodeci are used to-as Mahalia Jackson once said-"singing in churches where nobody would dare stop them until the Lord arrived." Instigators of spiritual ecstasy as boys, they are catalysts of another kind as men.
These two sets of brothers were raised in Pentecostal churches-African-American Christian temples named in commemoration of the descent of the Holy Ghost. But unlike Sam Cooke, Al Green, or the many other artists who've made the transformation from gospel to soul or pop music, Jodeci's other influence-hip hop-is something that didn't exist at all 25 years ago. (Al) Green (who went through a life-altering moment with a pot of cereal) is the legend to whom Andre Harrell compares K-Ci Hailey. "K-Ci's a real gospel singer," says Harrell with a bit of a laugh. "The first one dressed, first one to perform. The kind who might get some hot grits thrown on him by Mary [J. Blige,K-Ci's girlfriend] and end up singing gospel again."
Harrell knew the guys needed a little grooming, so he looked to a tastemaker. "Their style was country, not nationwide hot or East Coast refined," says Puffy, who'd been promoted to artist development by the time Jodeci were ready to drop Forever My Lady in 1991. He says he took a gamble and made them "look hip hop" because "all the tapes they had in their pockets were rap tapes."
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