It was shot in Orchard Park, then a half-century old and in disrepair.

Shortly afterward, all of the New Edition members reunited in a video for a Bell Biv DeVoe song called “ Word To Tha Mutha!” which debuted on MTV in summer 1991. Starting out, they were all barely entering their teens. He brought his nephew Ronnie DeVoe, from nearby Cathedral Apartments, into the group and then gave them their name, New Edition. Eventually, they sought the counsel of the man known for developing the most polished acts on the talent show circuit, Brooke Payne. Tresvant was eventually brought into a music group with Michael Bivins, Ricky Bell, and Bobby Brown, Orchard Park neighborhood kids my older siblings and cousins had befriended.

My cousin LeBaron Jones grew up in Orchard Park projects, where he was best friends with a kid named Ralph Tresvant. What I did get to see with my own eyes was the rise of New Edition. My firsthand experience with music began in the late ’70s - everything else I either had to be told about by my elders or read in the accounts of those who were there. The competitive circuit gave the world dancers like Wondertwins Billy and Bobby McClain singer Margo Thunder and legendary jazz drummer Tony Williams.

Talent shows like the Hollywood Talent Nite competitions - thrown by Maurice Starr in venues like Roscoe’s Lounge or The Strand Theatre - were as popular in inner city Boston as I imagined high school football was in Texas. At home, my sister and brothers would go up and down the dial on our stereos and boom boxes, switching between WILD, KISS 108 FM, WRBB, WERS, WBCN, WTBS (now WMBR), and WHRB. When I was growing up in Boston’s South End/Lower Roxbury neighborhood, music was a crucial part of our everyday lives.

New edition music