Jodeci

The bad boy group Jodeci was made up of two sets of brothers: Cedric 'K-Ci' and Joel 'Jo Jo' Hailey and Dalvin and Donald 'DeVante Swing' DeGrate. All four members of the group had strong ties with the Pentecostal church. The DeGrates father was a minister and both sets of brothers had released a gospel album before they became a group.

When the members of Jodeci first met, it was not in good terms. While they had heard each other's songs on the radio, K-Ci was with a girl Dalvin had once dated and a fight almost broke out. Yet fate had it in for the guys and they hung out and talked about potentially recording. The group came up with the name Jodeci at this time, a combination of three members aliases. JoJo DeVante K-Ci.

At 16, DeVante ran off to Minneapolis where he tried, and failed, to get in Prince's organization. Returning to their hometown of Charlotte, he wrote a song and recorded Jojo singing it. Leaving to go to New York and market themselves, the two boys were joined by K-Ci and Dalvin. They had 29 songs recorded when they arrived and approached Uptown Entertainment. They were nearly rejected but rapper Heavy D was impressed and convinced Uptown president Andre Harrell to listen to the group.

The group was signed and worked with Uptown executive Sean 'Puffy' Combs. Combs helped the group develop their bad boy image and in 1991, recorded Forever My Lady. The album's first single 'Stay' hit #1 on the R&B charts. Follow-ups 'Come and Talk to Me' and 'Forever My Lady' also went to #1 on the charts, helping the album sell over three million copies. K-Ci and JoJo were the typical lead vocalists while Devante did most of the production and songwriting.

In 1993 the group performed on 'Uptown Unplugged' an episode of MTV Unplugged. They did a cover of Stevie Wonder's 'Lately' and eventually released a studio version of the track. The singe reached #1 on the R&B charts and was a Top 5 pop hit.

The track Lately would be included on the group's next album Diary of a Mad Band which came out in the same year and had a bumpy start. The group was having conflicts with their label and thus, received very little promotion. Nevertheless, with 'Lately' and hit singles 'Feenin' and 'Cry For You' another #1 R&B hit, the album was able to sell over a million copies.

One of the group's major contributions to the R&B industry was DeVante's Swing Mob. Swing Mob was a collective of artists, songwriters and producers who all lived in a single house together. The twenty-plus members were mostly Jodeci fans who auditioned for DeVante backstage at concerts. Some of the notable members of the Swing Mob were Missy Elliot, her friends Tim 'DJ Timmy Tim' Mosley (later dubbed Timbaland by DeVante) and Melvin 'Magoo' Barcliff. Ginuwine was also a member of the Swing Mob.

The group's third album The Show, The After Party, The Hotel was released in 1995 and featured more of DeVante's tremendous production. The album had several hit singles including 'Love U 4 Life,' 'Get On Up,' and 'Freek'n You.'

Unfortunately, this was the last album ever released by the group as K-Ci and JoJo pursued a career together, Swing Mob collapsed and Dalvin went on to release his own solo album. While there have been almost constant murmurs of a comeback album, nothing has come of it to date.