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#NewEditionBET Trends – Bell Biv DeVoe On ‘New Edition Story’ Truth: Gary, Drugs, Bobby Brown, Ralph Tresvant [Video]

By Paula Mooney
Published on: 01:56 PST, Jan 26, 2017

Bell Biv DeVoe visited The Breakfast Club to discuss The New Edition Story, which is lighting up BET and social media with the #NewEditionBET hashtag. The three-part series airs its third part on Thursday, January 26. Already, fans of New Edition have turned to Twitter and Facebook and other social media platform to discuss just how much they’ve enjoyed watching the real journey of the New Edition group on BET. The story began five decades ago as New Edition was formed in 1978.

As seen in the following video, the members of Bell Biv DeVoe discussed The New Edition Story. They spoke about just how honest the series has been and the truth about what it portrayed behind the scenes.

Members of the New Edition group included Ronnie DeVoe, Ricky Bell, Michael Bivens, Bobby Brown, Johnny Gill and Ralph Tresvant, as seen in the top photo. The New Edition Story highlighted the formation of the group, and the group’s travels from humble beginnings, which stayed humble longer than they wished. Even while New Edition found success with songs like “Mr. Telephone Man” and “Candy Girl” and more, the mothers of the members of New Edition were only presented with a check for $1.87, which represented monies left over after expenses were supposedly deducted from gross revenues. As a result of such money troubles, the New Edition members found themselves returning to the projects after getting off of their tour bus.

But money wasn’t the only problem that came along with fame. Bell Biv DeVoe, or BBD, as they are also known, were pretty honest on The Breakfast Club as they talked about The New Edition Story. It was a film that could have happened 10 years ago, said BBD, but Bobby refused to sign on to the BET project because Brown didn’t want The New Edition Story to conflict with his own pending movie projects. Instead, Bivens called it a blessing in disguise that Brown didn’t sign on years ago because instead of a two-hour film on TV or the big screen, New Edition ended up with a three-part series on BET. It was a format that helped tell more of their story and brought them back to BET, a network that had always stood by them. Bet was the one network that would understand the cultural aspects of telling the New Edition story, Michael said.

And tell the story it did. With trending each night on Twitter while The New Edition Story story aired, the series unveiled all the drama of the New Edition group as they fought like brothers and lived the wild lives of “boys to men,” experiencing teenage fatherhood, drugs, groupies, jealousies and more.

BBD was pretty honest in admitting that even after all these years, the story of New Edition isn’t smooth sailing. That’s why only three of the original New Edition members showed up for the radio interview, claimed Michael, who revealed that there are plenty of things that they’d like to do as a New Edition group, but said that it’s difficult to get all six members to sign on to projects and agree at one time.

The writers and creators of The New Edition Story on BET seemed to do a bang-up job, though as BBD explained that just about everyone involved was interviewed for the BET series in order to get their own perspective of what happened during the glory days of New Edition. That’s when some of them learned all these years later that Ralph said he was set up to be the leader of New Edition. It’s a role that would devolve into Tresvant, at least one time, as claimed by BBD, refusing to mount the stage for a reunion show. Instead, Ralph sat in his tour bus at the venue while the others went onstage.

Other times, it was Bobby acting up, claimed The New Edition Story on BET, with Bobby taking hours to sing his popular songs on stage, leaving BBD only time to sing one song. And only after BBD bum-rushed the stage to take the microphone away from Brown, who in turn tried to turn the fire hose on BBD. A gun would be pulled out in front of 10,000 people at that show and would be cocked, but not shot, according to the above interview.

On Twitter, several terms related to The New Edition Story on BET are being searched for, according to the social media network. There’s #NewEditionBET Gary, which speaks to how New Edition was managed. There’s also plenty of searches for #NewEditionBET Bobby Brown from folks who want more information about Brown’s antics before and after leaving New Edition. Then there’s #NewEditionBET Johnny from people who are looking into Gill’s role in joining the New Edition group at a later period in time. The search term #NewEditionBET “Can You Stand the Rain?” points to one of New Edition’s most famous songs.

[Featured Image by Adrienne Battistella/Invision for Essence/AP Images]

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