Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Behind The Music: Bell Biv DeVoe’ on Paramount+, Catching Up With The ‘90s New Jack Swingers in 2024

Behind the Music: Bell Biv DeVoe, now streaming on Paramount+, is part of the streamer’s reboot of BTM, which was once a fixture of the programming on VH1. The format is familiar – an artist’s rise, an artist’s fall, and (hopefully) an artist’s redemption, all presented in a tight one hour package – and Paramount+ is producing all-new episodes in addition to “remixed” versions of old eps from the archive. Behind the Music: Bell Biv DeVoe falls into that remix category. Featured here are new interviews with Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, and Ronnie DeVoe alongside a ton of old footage from the 1980s and early ‘90s heyday of BBD, when their new jack swing sound signaled a break from their first group, the R&B boy band sensation New Edition.   

BEHIND THE MUSIC – BELL BIV DEVOE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: New Edition are singing and fronting as precocious/adorable teenagers in Members Only jackets. “We were supposed to be the second coming of the Jackson 5,” Michael Bivins says of his old group. 

The Gist: “Supposed to be” being the operative phrase. In 1983 and ‘84, smash singles like “Candy Girl” and “Cool it Now” brought the members of New Edition boy band levels of fame. “We looked good, we was fly, and we was different,” Bivins says of those early days in Behind the Music: Bell Biv DeVoe. But bad contracts they signed as kids caused friction on the money side, and personalities in the combo were pulling it apart. First, Bobby Brown left. Then lead singer Ralph Tresvant threatened to leave. Then Johnny Gill was added. And finally, New Edition became more like Done Edition.

Enter Bell Biv Devoe. With a boost from producers Hank Shocklee and the Bomb Squad, whose work with Public Enemy was the late-eighties rage, former New Edition backline guys Ricky Bell, Bivins, and Ronnie DeVoe became BBD, whose debut 1990 single “Poison” was and is an utter banger. (The “Poison” beat is forever, says Vibe Magazine editor Datwon Thomas. “It takes over every barbecue to this day.”) Fueled by hip-hop but “smoothed out, and on the R&B tip” – this became the BBD mantra – “Poison” established the aggressively catchy sound known as New Jack Swing. The success was great, and their egos got huge. But Ronnie DeVoe says what should have been their ticket to sustained superstardom only came crumbling down.

This is the typical arc of Behind the Music episode – all the bad stuff hits at the bottom of the hour. As hip-hop’s influence on popular music continued to evolve, Bell Biv Devoe grasped at how to grow with it. Squabbling within the trio, a faltering sophomore album, a tumultuous tour with a reunited New Edition in 1996, and then an indefinite hiatus. What happens to your personal identity when what has defined you and brought you adulation since your teenage years is suddenly long gone? Each member of BBD had to sort that out for himself before finding a way back to their group dynamic.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In 2017, Michael Bivins produced The New Edition Story, a docuseries covering the group’s career arc across three episodes. While it originally aired on BET, nowadays it’s available to stream on Paramount+, which also streams all three seasons of Couples Retreat, the VH1 reality series that BBD’s Ronnie DeVoe (pictured above) appeared on with his wife, former Real Housewives of Atlanta cast member Shamari DeVoe. And while Bobby Brown was never a member of BBD, he does appear here in old interviews, and is a reference point for the dramas Bell, Bivins, and DeVoe encountered post-New Edition. In 2018, BET aired the two-part Bobby Brown Story, which starred Woody McClain of Power Book II: Ghost as Brown.  

Our Take: In our current era, the zone is flooded with docuseries. Each project is different, of course – some are mostly hagiography, some use the past to promote something in the present, and some are just a visual blast through what music and pop culture used to look like. But that docuseries glut sharpens the Behind the Music approach. The 2020s reboot of the series is right to retain its one hour format, because it keeps filler to a minimum and moves the story along, no matter how good or how bad it’s going for the profiled artists. One of the coolest parts of Behind the Music: Bell Biv DeVoe is when each member of BBD is presented with footage of his own past self. They watch, fascinated, sometimes filling in context around the clip – Ricky Bell highlights how nervous he was, singing on a 1989 awards show in the minutes after Ralph Tresvant had shocked the group with the announcement of his departure – and sometimes not having seen that particular slice of their public-facing life before. These scenes offer real insight on a personal level, as opposed to any kind of generalized or even self-involved portrait of the past. 

Sex and Skin: Nothing too crazy here, beyond a brief discussion about the group’s amplification of sexual themes in songs like “Poison” and “Do Me,” themes that purposely deviated from the clean-cut suits and singing aesthetic of New Edition. “Being sexually explicit is part of what connected them to what was happening in hip-hop at the time,” music journalist Brendan Frederick says of Bell Biv Devoe. “It was part of what gave them credibility.”

Parting Shot: With over thirty years in the tank together as Bell Biv Devoe, Ronnie DeVoe says that the adversity the group has faced over the years has only made them closer. “We’re gonna make some more history together…”

Sleeper Star: It’s gotta be the fits, right? Colorful tracksuit tops, sweaters with leather panels, and 1980s ball caps rocking styles and colorways teams today hawk as throwback merchandise – it’s all on offer in the archival footage that makes up the bulk of the visuals in Behind the Music: Bell Biv DeVoe.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Poison” still gets BBD giddy. “As soon as I heard those snares,” Ronnie DeVoe says, referencing the blistering immediacy of the production. “And that bass line kicked in,” adds Ricky Bell, going on to hummingly approximate the bass groove. “It just had something that was totally different than New Edition,” DeVoe continues. “Even totally different than anything I’d heard on the radio up until this point.” 

Our Call: STREAM IT. Behind the Music: Bell Biv Devoe is an effective version of what the series retains in its rebooted, remixed form – an accounting of the highlights, lowlights, and redemptive moments from an artist’s career, tidied into a quick-watch hour. 

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.