Note:

Article courtesy of Harris Rosen from PEACE Magazine (Toronto, Canada.) and was written in 1993. If anyone would like to keep a copy of the following article, please give credit to the above publication.

Thank you for your cooperation

Alisha c!

www.peacemagazine.com

cover quote: Jodeci, "Angel’s or Devil’s in Disguise?"

PEACE issue #12

No, that wasn’t a misprint on the cover, it was a quote from Mr. Dalvin. And you though that Jodeci were nice church boys who sung love ballads. Well, they may sing about love, happiness, yearning and anything else concerning girls, "We don’t write about guys", but they have been in the limelight for other things. Not to take anything away form the massive success of their debut release, Forever My Lady, large singles "Forever My Lady", "Come and Talk To Me", "Lately" (a cover of the Stevie Wonder classic), appearance on the Uptown Unplugged MTV Special and CD, and track on the Who’s The Man soundtrack, "Let’s Go Through The Motions".

Diary Of A Mad Band, their return to action, will without a doubt, bring them even more accolades. Packed full with trademark ballads, up tempo jams, an appearance by Redman, and their first recorded cusses, it is a monster album, which not only shows a more mature band lyrically, but a great deal of versatility.

"I think if you come out and try to compete that’s when you fall by the wayside and somebody just passes you by because you get caught up in the competition", says Mr. Dalvin. "As long as you stay focused on what you know how to do and what you do best then you can’t get caught up. The real pressure we got was from the record company."

Don’t worry about that pressure because the only omission this album are musical interludes and skits. As citizens of Canada, along with Europe, we will be getting two bonus tracks not available on the US release, the number one hit, "Lately", and "Let’s Go Through The Motions" from the Who’s The Man soundtrack. CD owners will also get the up tempo jam, "Success" which details the life story of K-Ci, DeVante Swing, JoJo and Mr. Dalvin, how they started in the business and achieved success.

Taking the gospel harmonies they learned in the church and mixing them with r&b, and a hip hop mentality, Jodeci are known, along with Mary J. Blige, and the creators of hip hop soul. Their over the edge style and awareness of what it takes to get people excited is what led to them being dubbed a mad band, hence the title of their sophomore release, "Diary Of A Mad Band."

"To me, Jodeci is a very versatile group," explains Mr. Dalvin. "We’re not just stuck into one type of music that we can do. We play instruments as well as sing. If they call and say, ‘OK, you guys wanna do a song with Guns N’ Roses, y’all gotta play instruments with them’, we could do that because we listen to all types of music first of all. We don’t just listen to one type of music."

"Oh, by the way, we might do a duet with Guns N’ Roses. That’s in the making right now. It was our idea. They call us the black Guns N’ Roses so we’s like let’s get a song and do it with them. We’re gonna do a song that DeVante wrote for his girlfriend a long time ago, maybe like an 1989 thing."

Jodeci and Guns N’ Roses? Stranger things have happened. Mr. Dalvin claims he used to think that they were rednecks, "but really getting into their music I think it was just a big rumor that somebody started about them. When I first heard about it I said I think Guns N’ Roses are racist and then they proclaimed not to be, so I don’t know." I guess he never listened close enough to hear them use the word "nigger" as a lyric. "Oh, yeah! I never heard that!"

Without trying to get into bed with Guns N’ Roses, Jodeci have enough to worry about on the rumor mill. They are presently involved in suing a "major magazine" for slander. Mr. Dalvin admits that there are a lot of rumors circulating about the quartet. "How they were started I don’t know. I haven’t got the slightest clue."

He claims the band are average people trying to live average lives. Blaming the rumors on people who like to sling mud and drag others down, Mr. Dalvin does not want to be considered a star. "I want to live the average life. I want to be able to go places. I like to have people admires us for what we do, respect us for who we are but you know, I’m just like the next man. It’s just that I make music. That’s how I live."

"Sometimes I just feel like throwing it in and saying forget it. It gets that bad because you don’t understand why it’s people that constantly want to just drag you down. It seems like its always people that’s in your same race.

"I can see if it was somebody in the opposite race, ‘OK, we don’t want him to get nowhere, let’s just drag him down’, but its people that you want to admire you, that you admire, and they constantly sit there and try to drag your name through the dirt and say, ‘Let’s get paid off the negativity. It won’t hurt, let’s just get paid’, and they don’t know it’s tearin your personal life apart."

As the sons of a Pastor, rumors circulating about Mr. Dalvin and DeVante, and their supposed wrong doings have reached the church. This too takes its toll on the righteous pair.

"People come up to him and say, ‘I heard your son raped somebody.’ ‘I heard they got locked up for having guns.’ My father’s constantly hearing different things being he’s a Pastor it’s difficult on him" The worst rumor, which got totally blown out of proportion, according to Mr. Dalvin, is the one in which DeVante pointed a loaded gun and demanded sex from an 18 year old girl at his home.

"We never got accused of raping nobody," he says. "It was a gun charge. My brother has a gun cabinet in his house and a girl went in the gun cabinet and pulled the gun out. She made up some horrendous story how DeVante pulled a gun on her. She never said he raped her. She said he pulled a gun out on her and that was it. She showed herself, and then she got mad because I guess she wanted DeVante to sleep with her. I don’t know. Good thing he didn’t, and then she left his home. She wasn’t even mad, and her sister testified against her saying she was lying."

Stories have circulated about the behavior of the quartet at the video shoot for "Let’s Go Through The Motions". Witnesses have said that K-Ci and JoJo fondled and requested oral sex from a number of the models and extras. One girl has even stated that a group member grabbed her in the dressing room and demanded sexual services while brandishing a gun.

Another top rated rumor is that K-Ci impregnated his girlfriend, Mary J. Blige, and that former Uptown executive, Sean "Puffy" Combs, made her have an abortion as he felt it would ruin her career.

"That’s not even true. That’s just something that the media made up," claims Mr. Dalvin. "She was never pregnant. That’s not true and everybody, every interview I do (asks) ‘Is Mary J. Blige pregnant’. No she’s not! So as you see, these things get around and how twisted they get."

Mr. Dalvin does not see how Jodeci has been chosen to withstand these vicious attacks. He even sends out a challenge to anyone who he feels wishes them ill. "We average people like everybody else and we not gonna be less man than the next man. If we have to deal with confrontation then we handle it the way we have to.

"Even if it’s something new, ‘Oh, they pulled a gun out on somebody at the mall and they started shooting everybody in the store!’. I hear so many crazy stories about us now. We addicted to drugs. We made songs because some girl broke our hearts and we tried to kill ourselves."

"I hear all kinds of things man. All kinds of things. But that’s the downside of it ‘cause you ask yourself why. Why are they doing this to us? We haven’t done anything to hurt nobody."

In terms of avoiding the media and rampant fans in the future, Mr. Dalvin and Jodeci are in a catch 22 position. Mr. Dalvin explains, "You really can’t avoid it because like I said we human just like anybody else and you wanna have fun like anybody else but you got to take far more precautions than anybody ‘cause once you become anybody, achieve a little bit of attention, then you become a target of anything. You got people constantly trying to say, ‘Let’s get negative things about ‘em, get paid on the negativity’. So that’s what you to be precautions about."

The only thing Jodeci want to do this time is make good music, sell and tour. "And that’s the only thing we hope to do this time too," says Mr. Dalvin.

On a positive note, check for a new DeVante Swing run label, Swing Mob Records, with all female troupe, Sista and male artist, Tornado. Jodeci are presently preparing for their next live tour, "getting a big surprise together now."