After a sweet beginning and solo careers, Baltimore's own R&B artists are back together and hoping to climb the charts again.
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By Rob Hiaasen
Sun Staff
Originally published March 16, 2003
LOS ANGELES - She has a cold, a beastly one. Still, Delisa Duncan stands in the rain outside the Orpheum Theatre. She will not be asked to be in Dru Hill's new video. She didn't bring the right clothes, namely a dancer's skirt capable of previously unseen heights. Duncan just brought a disposable Kodak, an umbrella, and every desire to meet the band from Baltimore. Did we say meet? She is here to touch Dru Hill.
"I loved them since Day One - November 1996, when their first record came out," she says. "They are very romantic." And they have reunited.
Dru Hill, separated for four years, wants to recapture its place as leading players in a packed field of rhythm-and-blues artists in a new music world order headlined by R. Kelly, LL Cool J, Mary J. Blige and TLC. Not to mention Eminem, 50 Cent, Ja Rule, Ashanti, Jay-Z and Nelly. Not to mention Justin Timberlake!
Dru Hill's
original members - Sisqo, Nokio, Woody, and Jazz - are no longer kids
singing over cooling candy at The Fudgery at Harborplace, their public proving
grounds in the early 1990s. They are now men in their mid-20s with thong songs,
dragon clothing lines, and Top 10 songs to their names. "Our music," says, Larry "Jazz" Anthony, "has changed from the art of songwriting to writing about our life." And life - the love part - will break your heart, which sounds like a song. It sounds like a new video from Dru Hill.
Before their solo projects, these guys were hot. Why not get back together? "There's strength in numbers," says Tamir "Nokio" Ruffin. The guys just hope singing hasn't gone out of style since their seductive debut forever ago in 1996.
Dru Hill is back. Five of them this time.
In downtown Los Angeles, California's Broadway is an historic theater district where once Bob Hope and Will Rogers worked. Some of the old movie palaces and nickelodeons on South Broadway have become retail outlets, but the Orpheum Theatre is still in business. The home of the last installed theater organ in Los Angeles, the Orpheum is reserved today for the making of Dru Hill's "I Love You" video. The new video premieres this Wednesday on BET.
Inside this 1926 vaudevillian theater, Dru Hill awaits the arrival of its wardrobe, chiefly Sisqo's custom dragon jacket (L.L. Bean does not ship dragon jackets). It's 11 a.m. and still no clothes for the $500,000 video shoot for the band's second single off their third record, Dru World Order. Hurry up and wait - that old business. Band members take turns doing one-arm pushups on the stage. Well, the stockier Woody and Jazz skip the one-arm part. Let's not go overboard here.
Backstage, dancers wait their turn in makeup chairs. They look back at you in the mirror. Scola, so nicknamed during his hustling days on Baltimore basketball courts, introduces us to one featured dancer from Chicago. "Isn't she pretty?" asks Scola. It's an airtight rhetorical question.
Scola has "Family" tattooed on his neck. (Dru Hill likes tattoos, with Nokio leading the pack with 77.) Scola is excited to see someone from Baltimore and says hello through us to his mother, Dorothy Louise Carol Johnson. "Love you, babe. I'd die for you." With the band back in full business mode, members now spend maybe three months a year in their hometown.
Rufus "Scola" Waller joined the band last year, leading one music critic to say: "As if its members weren't already trying to drown one another out as a quartet, Dru Hill added a fifth member - and he thinks he's the second coming of Stevie Wonder." Others wrote of the bigger band and new single: "Dru Hill was welcomed back to the scene with open arms by the R & B community. ... Harmonies swirl along side moans and pleas. This is the stuff that made these guys famous."
Scola prefers a basketball analogy.
"It's like running with a championship team - like all those Laker teams or the Bulls with Michael Jordan," he says.
Dru Hill - named for Druid Hill Park - has put up large numbers: Their 1996 debut record had five singles in the Top 10, including "Tell Me" and "In My Bed." The 1998 follow-up, Enter the Dru, also went platinum - with both records now having sold more than 4 million. In 1999, Mark "Sisqo" Andrews went solo. His debut album sold 5 million copies, thanks in large part to "Thong Song" - the anthem of Summer 2000. Sisqo's second album, Unleash the Dragon, sold a relatively modest 1 million copies.
To recap, Scola joined a music machine responsible so far for more than 10 million in U.S. record sales, and he gets to dance with divas in gorgeous theaters. Plus, who wouldn't want to be mentioned in the same sentence with Stevie Wonder?
By late morning in mid-February, the video crew inside the Orpheum tests a lift behind the stage. An orchestra from Pasadena is seated on the converted bandstand; the string section practices bow-synching. White-lit steps lead down to the stage from the lift, where the members of Dru Hill descend the steps while looking powerfully sexy. It's trickier than it looks. "And I'm scared of heights," Woody says.
There, a flas
h of red hair and a white headband. Either Sisqo is wearing a Santa
cap or there's been another changing of the color guard. Front man Sisqo has
gone red. "In two years," says Delisa Duncan, "it will probably
be blue." She's now sitting in the back of the theater. They let her in out
of the rain. A video shoot, like a movie set, is a compressed, occasionally tedious business. Time is indeed money, strangers are in the way and cell phones rule human communication. The disappointing thing about watching Dru Hill make a video is that you don't get to hear them sing live; it's all a repetitious recording. Still, it's fun to hear the director shout "Energy! Energy! Energy!" and this beauty, "Take it to church!" The phrase, roughly meaning "the highest level," reportedly was coined by Snoop Dogg.
"Take it to church!" the assistant director again bellows to the sound man, who again plays back "I Love You." In the rare moments the new single isn't being played back, it plays back in your head. I love you, even though I said that you could leave me ... I still believe in you and me ... I'm begging you to stay. Dru Hill still writes about love - having it, losing it, never having it, you know, love.
"Heartache, a guitar and a pot of coffee," Jazz says, "are still the ingredients to songwriting."
Fast Tracks:
Sisqo: Wears NY Yankees cap for video shoot. On stage, he's jittery as Jagger. What's with the dragon belt buckles, bling bling, and dragon CD art? Dru Hill didn't pick the logo, "but it's ironic because I started resembling a dragon," Sisqo says. Slithery, coiled, a little chin hair.
A solo binge seemed inevitable for Sisqo. His "Thong Song" led to deals with Pepsi and McDonald's and his own dance show on MTV called Sisqo's Shakedown. He appeared in movies along side Kirsten Dunst and Cuba Gooding Jr. Critics labeled his solo persona "cartoonish" and "Thong Song" a novelty song. Whatever. He's happy to have the band back. To My Brothers Dru Hill, Let's Show 'em How We Do, Sisqo wrote in the record's liner notes.
Scola: One-arm pushups. Ab City. Gotta be in shape for the road, he says. Like every member, Thanks God in liner notes. "We're a spiritual group." Scola tends to wander the set, causing director and manager types to occasionally bellow, "Where's Scola???!!!"
Woody: The Quiet One. (Every band has one.) Proud to have co-written record's spiritual number, "My Angel/How Could You." Favorite album growing up? Stevie Wonder's Talking Book. Woody sings a sample of James Taylor's "Carolina in My Mind." His girlfriend rolls her eyes; his visitor beams. Woody is also kind enough to update our handshake.
Jazz: Nicknamed for his early scat singing. Co-wrote "Never Stop Loving You" on new record. Claims to have been the best fudge-maker in the group. Attended Baltimore School for the Arts. Tattoo tally: 8.
Nokio: GQ material. Wears a "Teenage Millionaire" T-shirt and drinks Welch's grape juice in the band's trailer. Nokio, 24, produced most of the new record. His musical grandparents, Jacqueline and James Owings, live in Baltimore, but he has since moved to New Jersey. He had been fired at The Fudgery.
"I was the worst," Nokio says. "I was too busy looking at the girls and getting their phone numbers."
Nokio has a 3-year-old son named Jordan, and another boy on the way. He plans to marry, which could be a setback for untold fans.
James "Woody" Green had actual red hair. The northeast Baltimore native was nicknamed by his father, who thought his newborn son resembled Woody Woodpecker. That's one story - another is how the guys (minus Scola) started singing at City College in the early 1990s. Their gospel band was called Legecy, a long forgotten acronym. Sisqo, Jazz, Woody and Nokio also became known at The Fudgery, which still employs talented folks to make fudge and sing such classics as the Stevie Wonder tribute, "Isn't Fudge Lovely?"
Regional manager Paul Lewis remembers a previous manager firing Sisqo and Woody, but they were wisely rehired. Sisqo coordinated some dozen performances daily, depending on fudge production. Sisqo sang at Lewis' wedding. "They were good guys," Lewis says of the crew. But were they good candy makers? "They're great singers - let's leave it at that." Actually, Sisqo became a good fudge-maker, very dedicated.
They entered a talent show in 1992 at Morgan State University - except for Woody. His mother, a gospel singer, took her son out of the talent show so he could attend church. Woody would not be left behind, though. A fledgling music producer named Kevin Peck saw the group perform at Morgan State, treated them to a Burger King meal after the show, and eventually managed Dru Hill until 1999. Soon after, Woody shocked fans by leaving the band to make his own gospel record and to tend to his ailing mother.
His mother has since passed away, and Woody returned to Dru Hill.
"You think you're doing your own thing, but at the end of the day, people want to see Dru Hill," says Woody. "At least people can say, 'that's the one who did the gospel record.'"
Back in the band, Woody plays a position - like all the members do. Dru Hill is a meld of Sisqo's showmanship, Woody's affection for gospel, Scola's soul influence, Jazz's classical training and Nokio's producing and song-writing skills. Add their street-corner harmonies in ballads and in their club music, and this is their sound.
They tried it alone for four years, but feel more at home together. The band might never experience again their 1996 burst of success. It's hard enough for a band to stay together and not become last year's forgotten Grammy winner. It's rarer still for a band to reunite - and regain popularity. Since its release last year, Dru World Order has sold nearly 1 million copies and its first single, "I Should Be," soon charted alongside singles by R. Kelly, Ja Rule, Nelly, Missy Elliot and Aaliyah.
The inclusive R & B genre dominates the U.S. music market, but it's not your father's rhythm and blues heard in the sounds of, say, Motown. R & B - traditionally characterized by soulful singing and storytelling - is now a hybrid of funk, traditional soul, urban contemporary, neo soul, rap and hip-hop. In short, it's pop music today.
So, where does a straight R & B act such as Dru Hill fit in?
"Wherever they can," says band manager, Kenneth Crear. "You don't have to sing to sell records anymore. Dru Hill can actually sing."
If a city block had legs, a chipper cell phone, and wore a Lakers jacket, it could be Crear's body double. This is a big man, who offers a sobering take on the music business: Consumers are fickle. The lousy economy is hurting the music business, too. Without sales, the dancers, dragon jackets, historic theater and acclaimed video directors go bye-bye.
From his seat in the Orpheum Theatre, Crear watches Dru Hill rehearse dance steps atop a spectacular decal of a dragon. "No one is bigger than the brand," Crear says, before asking Scola to take out his gum while he's dancing.
The Dru Hill machine is in overdrive. Crear wants another Dru Hill record in 18 months, and he's date-crunching for a European tour in April, with a U.S. tour to follow in May. There will be meet-and-greet events, win-a-date contests, countless radio station promo tours, more interviews, more videos, of course. Anything to get the word out, anything to get their music back on the radio.
"Straight R & B can't get arrested on the radio. That's a sad thing," says Gail Mitchell, R & B editor for Billboard magazine. "A lot of people have asked me, 'There's a new Dru Hill record out?'"
She is closer now.
From her seat, Delisa Duncan watches the guys rehearse dipping the dancers. Skirts fly. "They're going to catch a cold like me," Duncan says. Then, she watches the crew shoot a quick party scene featuring Nokio. Another attractive woman dances with and against Nokio. The scene ends, perhaps too quickly.
"That's it?" Nokio asks, as lipstick is wiped off his face. "Let him go!" the assistant director jokes to the dancer. It's all very professional, but can we say here that this isn't a terrible line of work if you can get it? Better enjoy. "Everything ends," as Crear says.
During a mini-break in the shooting, Nokio, Sisqo and Scola bound up the aisle and surround Duncan. She is their age. She is their only fan in this moment.
A visitor takes pictures of her with the band members. Without hesitation, Duncan makes a move for Sisqo's red hair. (Imagine Elton John allowing a fan to run fingers through his hair weave or James Taylor inviting a fan to rub his dome?) Sisqo ducks his head slightly to allow Duncan to feel his hair. He doesn't look like a dragon at all. He looks gentle.
Duncan will pack up and leave the Orpheum Theatre in a few minutes, return to her L.A. home and to her FedEx job the next day. But today in February, she gutted out a cold and the rain to meet, greet and touch Dru Hill.
Take it to church.