Maybe, in fact, a little too much story, since it would be competing narratives that led to their multiple breakups and failed reunions. Other great R&B songs from the era imply narrative (“Can You Stand the Rain” and “End of the Road” immediately come to mind), but Dru Hill brought story to the fore. This is wonderfully melodramatic stuff, hammered home by the song’s music video, which finds a friend of the group dying in a fire after trying to return the duffle bag they had accidentally left on a nearby basketball court.
Again, it’s Sisqó who describes the action: “ I sit in silence/ And begin to think/ As laughter echoes/ Through the air.” A proclamation follows (“ I can’t get you off my mind”), reveries unfurl and the chorus at the end of this musical road takes place in flashback: “ We were five steps/ From eternity.” In other words, the relationship at the song’s center was damn close to transcendent joy and perfect love but couldn’t quite get there before its tragic conclusion. Perhaps Sisqó’s porridge is too hot as well?Ĭoncluding weepie “5 Steps” takes things another (tragic) step forward to uncover a more ragged form of grief. You could use the song to teach three-act narrative structure, preferably in a unit about Goldilocks and the Three Bears, since, after all, somebody’s sleeping in his bed. But not before a final, dramatic reveal: when they made love (at some previous time? in the midst of breaking up?), he heard her call out the name of her other lover (“ call out his nay-eee-ayy-aame”). Sisqó gets home and now knows for sure that “ Something is wrong/ ‘Cause it’s written all over face.” This is the end, he realizes, and he leaves forever. The first verse sets the scene: he’s “ got this feeling” that something’s off, and his friends intensify it with their own misgivings, but he still doesn’t want to believe it’s true. The plot of “In My Bed,” for example, the group’s first platinum hit, involves Sisqó’s suspicions that his girlfriend has been cheating on him.
Many of the songs on Dru Hill tell love stories with an emphasis on all things sad: tales of loneliness, heartbreak and death. Moreover, the group’s debut was remarkably and infectiously theatrical-that is, both hyperbolically expressive and narrative-driven.
It was a good time for the all-male R&B group, with powerhouses Blackstreet, Boyz II Men, New Edition and Jodeci also raking in millions of sex-positive dollars during the era.ĭru Hill weren’t exactly innovators in this crowded field, but they could keep stride, vocally, with the best of them. Their debut LP was a certified-platinum success, its first three singles charting in the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 and faring even better on the R&B charts. The group would sign with Island Records, who released their first two albums (not without a good bit of drama, which eventually required the intervention of the Reverend Jesse Jackson). Consisting of original members Sisqó, Jazz, Woody Rock and Nokio, Dru Hill formed in 1992 in Baltimore, the city’s Druid Hill Parks serving as the inspiration for their name.
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