color me badd tour 1992

Best Color Me Badd Songs of All Time - Top 10 Tracks

Best of Color Me Badd

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Without further ado, here are Color Me Badd top 10 tracks of all time:

1. I Wanna Sex You Up - Single Mix

2. all 4 love, 3. wildflower, 4. close to heaven, 5. i adore mi amor, 6. the earth, the sun, the rain, 7. all 4 love - re-recorded, 8. remember when, 9. i wanna sex you up - reprise version, 10. i wanna sex you up - re-recorded, color me badd details.

Color Me Badd were a male R&B vocal group which was formed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1987. The members were Bryan Abrams, Mark Calderon, Kevin Thornton and Sam Watters.

The a cappella, pop, and hip hop outfit, whose R&B harmony vocals were offset by mild rap interjections and a post-New Kids On The Block street dance image, were discovered by Kool & The Gang’s Robert Bell in 1990.

The group enjoyed 5 U.S. hit singles from their debut album C.M.B. throughout 1991 and 1992. These were “I Wanna Sex You Up” (U.S.#2), “I Adore Mi Amor” (U.S.#1), “All 4 Love” (U.S.#1), “Thinkin Back” (U.S.#16) and “Slow Motion” (U.S.#18). “I Wanna Sex You Up” was also on the New Jack City soundtrack, and hit number 1 on the UK Singles Charts.

Their debut album, C.M.B. was released in September 1991, eventually selling over 6 million copies worldwide, and being certified 3x platinum in the United States by the RIAA.

Color Me Badd performed at the 1991 Smash Hits Poll Winners Awards in the UK, winning the Best New Group trophy. In January 1992, they were awarded the Favourite Single, Soul/R&B trophy at the 19th annual American Music Awards, held at the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles. March 1992 also saw Color Me Badd win the Best R&B / Soul Single, and Song Of The Year, categories at the sixth annual Soul Train Music Awards.

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What Ever Happened to: Color Me Badd

May 28, 2014 Edward Bowser music , Whatever Happened to 3

A few months back, I blessed y’all with my list of the Top 10 Male R&B Groups of the 90s. It was mostly well received, aside from a few asinine complaints:

“Where was Day26?”

“What time period does this include?”

“Why didn’t you list Destiny’s Child!? FML”

Y’all need to do better.

However one reader brought up a great point – “where is Color Me Badd?”

I admit that I mentally wrote off Color Me Badd as one-hit-wonders. But when I went back and researched, I was proven wrong.

See I can admit when I make mistakes (sometimes).

So, allow me to make things up to Color Me Badd by checking on their whereabouts.

Oklahoma City boys Bryan Abrams, Mark Calderon, Kevin Thornton and Sam Watters were discovered in 1990 by  Kool & The Gang’s Robert Bell. It didn’t take long for them to sign to Giant Records and drop their debut, C.M.B. (WE ALL WE GOT!) the following year.

Ladies were infatuated with these dudes, and it didn’t help that C.M.B’s first single was “I Wanna Sex You Up.” Only in the ’90s could you have a song that explicit yet totally ridiculous. Adults weren’t happy though. That song was BANNED in my middle school, along with Naughty By Nature’s “OPP” T-shirts.

Remember when hip-hop was anti-authority and scared adults? Now, this is the scariest thing in urban music:

But I digress. “I Wanna Sex You Up” was a No. 1 R&B hit and a No. 2 pop hit as well. And Color Me Badd wasn’t done. The schmaltzy “I Adore Mi Amore” (which I once thought was a Michael Jackson song) and “All 4 Love” (with a video straight off the set of Full House) were both No. 1 pop hits. “Thinkin’ Back” and “Slow Motion” performed well too, pushing the album to triple platinum status (or 5x platinum, depending on whom you ask, apparently). After the success of C.M.B ., the boys from Oklahoma were now bonafide superstars.

Remember remix albums? They were all the rage in the 90s, and Color Me Badd saw dollar signs. The group released Young, Gifted and Badd: The Remixes in 1992, featuring a bunch of mixes of their big singles and … not much else. The only song of note here was “Forever Love,” which climbed to No. 15 on the charts.

The following year, the group released their proper sophomore effort, Time & Chance . This was the album I slept on when creating my Top Groups of the ’90s list. The album wasn’t nearly as huge as the group’s debut but it certainly was successful.

You can tell this is a ’90s boy band album cover because dudes are in leathers mean-mugging against a chain-link fence.  But don’t worry ladies, they’re all sensitive and stuff – just listen to the title track . The next single, “Choose” actually wasn’t bad. It’s probably my favorite CMB song. Those singles pushed the album to gold status (or platinum, depending on whom you ask. I need my Internet sources to get their acts together on these sales figures.).

The gang took a break and re-emerged in 1996 with Now and Forever . And judging by that album cover, they just took their senior pictures! Aww.

This album had a much heavier R&B influence, thanks to contributions from producers Babyface, Boyz II Men and Jon B. “The Earth, The Sun, The Rain ” is kind of a cheesy ballad but it certainly was successful, reaching No. 19 on the pop charts. It was the group’s last notable hit.

In 1998, CMB moved the Epic Records and gave it one last shot with Awakening . “Remember When” got a little bit of radio play around my way but it vanished quickly. Soon after, so did the group.

Individual projects kept most of the group’s members busy over the years. Sam went on to be a very successful producer, providing pop gems for artists like Kelly Clarkson and Jessica Simpson and R&B hits for Fantasia.

Kevin decided to go into ministry, releasing music and becoming a licensed minister. He’s also actively bringing awareness to sex trafficking. Good for him.

Bryan and Mark are trying to keep the magic alive. They’re still touring as Color Me Badd with new member Martin Kimber.

Should They Come Back?: Well, word on the Internet Streetz is that the NEW AND IMPROVED Color Me Badd plans to release an album this year. I wouldn’t hold my breath on seeing a reunion of the original quartet though. Kevin and Sam seem content with their new lives. And that’s fine. CMB was definitely a product of its era. Let those memories stay in the 90s, when CMB were among the best.

Loved CMB back in the day & still love their music! Saw them last year in an “I Love the 90s” multi-group concert. They were GREAT & the ladies were all still screaming, me included! It was cute because Bryan seemed genuinely surprised by still getting that reaction from all the women lol. Love reading all of these “Whatever happened to…” updates-home on a rainy day, binge-reading them all. Keep them coming!

My favorite song from CMB was Time and Chance and I rank it up there with other greatest hits. This song told the gospel in a tune young adults needed to hear and learn. Too bad they didn’t get their just deserved fame.

Simply formerly” Trend idols handsome n talented nothing more. To endure ordeal production package competing with “New Edition,Boys2Men and New Kids on the Block. Crafty hooks along the sexy looks mistook, just another fad anyhow. Later titles showing there audience maturing” unfortunately same. Style many producers just playing it safe to emulated current sound. Color Me Badd ordeal you never “distinguish whom” was the lead singer. Sadly didn’t mature physically wise look older including weight mgmt. Listen to yesteryears guys were talent should have pursue…acting along singing on soundtracks. I want to Sex You Up (There signature title) number hit 1 abroad best of the music. The Earth,The Sun and The Rain,On my Mind,To Last Know?,From the Buck and How Deep “Jack Swing Pop” guys have great voices.

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32 Years Ago, Super Bowl Halftime Wasn’t A Big Deal — Until One Thing Stole The Show

Remember when the Superbowl Halftime show wasn’t important? Of course you don’t.

While the Super Bowl halftime show is a blockbuster event — able to attract A-list performers like Dr. Dre, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, and Beyoncé — it wasn’t always the spectacle we know today. And, if you’re in your 30s or 40s, you probably only barely remember when everything changed. In the history of the Super Bowl, the performances were very much an afterthought. Until 1992.

From the first Super Bowl in 1967 through the 1989 iteration, things were pretty low-key. But, January 26, 1992, was a line-in-the-sand moment that forced the NLF’s hand to significantly up its game if it wanted to command audience attention and give people something to talk about around the water cooler the next day.

To be clear, effort wasn’t the issue with that 1992 performance. With the Winter Olympics hitting the CBS airwaves on February 8, 1992, just two weeks after Super Bowl XXVI, the broadcaster seized on the opportunity to turn the halftime show into a brazen promotional spectacular for its next cornerstone broadcast.

CBS pulled out a lot of stops with their Broadway musical-style “Winter Wonderland” extravaganza. Figure skaters Dorothy Hammill and Brian Boitano both hosted and skated in the show, hundreds of intricately costumed musicians and dancers performed a handful of winter-themed songs that honestly felt a little too Christmasy by the time the game rolled around in mid-January, and Gloria Estphan closed things out with a medley of her hits including “Live For Loving You” and “Get On Your Feet.”

However, despite CBS’ best efforts, none of that was enough to hold people’s attention. Sure, some folks used those 13 minutes as a bathroom and snack break. But 20 million other viewers grabbed their remotes or walked up to the TV to change the dial over to their local FOX affiliate so they could check out an audacious counterprogramming endeavor.

Just six years old at the time, FOX (the channel) was finding it difficult to hang with the big three broadcast networks. So they decided to give people something compelling to watch when the Super Bowl teams went to the locker room in the form of a special live episode of the sketch comedy show In Living Color .

The cast of In Living Color in 2012.

FOX’s second most popular show at the time behind The Simpsons , the upstart In Living Color managed to assemble a cast list that, in hindsight, is remarkably potent. Keenen Ivory Wayans created, wrote, and starred in the program alongside his brother Damon Wayans, Jim Carey, Jamie Foxx, and David Alan Greer. Rosie Perez choreographed dance routines for the “Fly Girls” to perform coming in and out of breaks, one of the flyest of whom was none other than Jennifer Lopez.

In addition to that core crew, Pauley Shore also made an appearance on the In Living Color Super Bowl episode, and Color Me Badd sang their hit single “I Wanna Sex You Up” to close out the show.

FOX’s upset bid stood in stark contrast to CBS’ offering of The University of Minnesota marching bad providing musical backing for kids performing a “Frosty the Snowman” rap while inflatable snowmen bobbed in the background. CBS lost approximately 10 percent of its Super Bowl viewership at halftime, setting off alarm bells at the NFL.

Taking that shot across the bow with utmost seriousness, the NFL went all out in 1993, bringing in none other than Michael Jackson to perform. Between the two legs of his Dangerous world tour — which would end up grossing over $100 million and surpass a total attendance of 3,500,000 people — the King of Pop delivered a performance that redefined the standard for a halftime show and established the Super Bowl halftime show in particular as one of the most coveted performance opportunities around. Basically, Michael Jackson doing the Super Bowl in 1992 is, indirectly, Color Me Badd and In Living Color’s doing.

Color Me Badd in 1992.

To be fair, the 1992 “Winter Wonderland” show wasn’t the worst of the modern era. That dubious distinction is widely thought to go to the 1991 Super Bowl halftime show, which featured an awkward coming together of New Kids on the Block and various classic Disney characters that ended with a grand finale of New Kids and a chorus of kids singing “It’s A Small World” while Mickey Mouse stood center stage can-canning in an Uncle Sam looking getup.

If you don’t remember that gem, it’s probably because the performance wasn’t shown live. ABC aired a news report during halftime of Super Bowl XXV on January 27, 1991, as it took place ten days into Operation Desert Storm. A recording of the halftime show aired following the game, and the indelible musical memory most people are left with from that year is Whitney Houston’s historic rendition of the national anthem. And if you remember that, then yes, you are officially old. But, thankfully, I'm old enough to remember why the Super Bowl halftime musical segment is now very, very special.

The 2024 Super Bowl happens on Sunday, February 11.

This article was originally published on Jan. 26, 2024

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Color Me Badd Part of I Love the ’90s Tour

Mark Calderon Talks Then and Now

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What do Kool & the Gang and Bon Jovi have in common? Both bands figured in the ascension of multiplatinum recording artists Color Me Badd (CMB), who perform a middle set on the I Love the ’90s bill at the S.B. Bowl on Sunday, July 3. The band, known for its amalgamated style that blends hip-hop samples, pop, and R&B, is on tour with Vanilla Ice, Salt-N-Pepa, and Tone Loc. “We kind of give the audience a break from the rap,” said CMB’s Mark Calderon, laughing.

As new jack swing leaders in the early 1990s, the quartet of Romeos ​— ​Bryan Abrams, Sam Watters, Kevin Thornton, and Calderon ​— ​dubbed Color Me Badd conquered the earth with a succession of crooning hits, led by “I Wanna Sex You Up” and “I Adore Mi Amor.” Their rise to fame began in the middle of the country and is as colorful as the band’s moniker. “Bryan [Abrams] and I, we started the group in 1984 in Oklahoma City in the hallways of our school,” Calderon said, remembering how they originally met throwing down in a sing-off. “I was like, man, I’m just gonna sing with this guy, forget about singing against him.”

Calderon brought in Watters and Thornton and, despite teen awkwardness, the four nutted up the moxie to perform guerilla-style for some major acts, including Bon Jovi, Kool & the Gang, and Huey Lewis and the News. “We knew that we were good. Being in Oklahoma City, you had to take any breaks you could,” Calderon said of their rogue auditioning techniques.

In 1987, they spotted Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, of the hair metal kings Bon Jovi, exiting a Penn Square Mall movie theater and took advantage of the chance encounter. They duo were tired and heading back to their hotel, Calderon remembered, but the ambitious teens asked the New Jersey singer to let them perform an a cappella number (“Daddy’s Home”). Initially wary, Bon Jovi was so blown away he invited CMB to open their concert the next night before 20,000 people.

While that experience gave them exposure, it didn’t seal CMB’s pro deal. Their actual big break came one year after their Bon Jovi run-in when they met Kool & the Gang. The famed funk band came through Oklahoma City as part of the educational initiative “It’s Kool to Stay in School,” a reward for the most attentive students (which definitely did not include Calderon, Abrams, and Watters). “We didn’t have perfect attendance; we skipped school to attend the ‘It’s Kool to Stay in School’ party,” said Calderon, laughing. But their impromptu performance impressed Robert “Kool” Bell, who helped them land management. “It hit so fast, we didn’t know what was going on,” said Calderon of their catapult to fame.

Although “I Adore Mi Amor” was a #1 hit for the group in 1991, it is the ubiquitous “I Wanna Sex You Up” that is perhaps Color Me Badd’s best remembered song (it peaked at #2 on the U.S. charts), thanks to the film New Jack City . “We got our record deal off of ‘I Adore Mi Amore,’” Calderon said, but when Giant Records hosted a call for the New Jack City soundtrack, Elliot Straite (Dr. Freeze), who had just produced the monster Bell Biv DeVoe hit “Poison,” worked his magic on “Sex You Up,” which made the soundtrack. “The song just took off like a rocket,” Calderon recalled.

With changing consumer tastes, CMB’s popularity declined across the 1990s, and the band went through lineup changes. Watters left the group in 1998 to produce ​— ​scoring hits with Jessica Simpson, Céline Dion, Kelly Clarkson, and 98 Degrees ​— ​and hasn’t returned since. Thornton, in CMB as recently as 2015, is out again. Still Calderon and Abrams, who have remained the group’s core, have continued to put out records and attract strange bedfellows ​— ​CMB collaborated with Insane Clown Posse on the 2012 song “Ghetto Rainbows.” Said Calderon of the horror-core group, “They’ve always been fans of ours. They’re just really good guys.” Recently, Calderon and Abrams inducted Adam Emil of Chicago to complete CMB as a trio and recorded an upcoming single, “In Case You Didn’t Know.” Calderon promises a new album circa 2017.

As for the tour, the I Love the ’90s Bowl stop could not be tastier: Vanilla Ice ​— ​he of “Ice Ice Baby” and reality shows such as The Surreal Life ​— ​headlines a bill that includes Salt-N-Pepa (“Push It,” “Shoop”), Tone Loc (“Wild Thing,” “Funky Cold Medina”), and Young MC (“Bust a Move”), and, of course, Color Me Badd. (Coolio, All-4-One, Kool Moe Dee, Kid ’n Play, and Rob Base are also part of the tour lineup, depending on the market.)

Surprisingly, it took this yearlong tour, which began in January, for Calderon to meet many of his early-’90s chart-topping, urban pop peers. Back in the day, CMB only met Salt-N-Pepa a few times, he said. “Rob [Van Winkle, a k a Vanilla Ice]: [I’m] just getting to know him. Tone Loc, Coolio, Rob Base: They’ve been great. We’re all grown up; we all have families,” Calderon added. “Backstage, everyone gets along. No one’s big-headed.”

The concerts have been high-energy, and during their stage time, CMB re-creates the choreography from their videos. “Everybody stays on their feet,” Calderon said. “We definitely burn a lot of calories up there.”

Still, everything smooths out when CMB performs the slow-burning “The Earth, the Sun, the Rain,” the calliope-kissed bounce of “All 4 Love,” the Valentino-meets-Banderas, bilingual-ballad charms of “I Adore Mi Amor,” and the libidinous “I Wanna Sex You Up.”

“It’s a lot of fun,” Calderon said. “You know every song nonstop.”

I Love the ’90s, featuring Color Me Badd, Vanilla Ice, Salt-N-Pepa, Tone Loc, and Young MC, takes over the S.B. Bowl stage (1122 N. Milpas St.) Sunday, July 3. For tickets and information, call 962-7411 or see sbbowl.com .

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Color Me Badd: Heartbreaker

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Color Me Badd performs in the music video "Heartbreaker" from the album "C.M.B." recorded for Giant and Reprise Records. The music video opens at a darkened dance club illuminated by flashin... Read all Color Me Badd performs in the music video "Heartbreaker" from the album "C.M.B." recorded for Giant and Reprise Records. The music video opens at a darkened dance club illuminated by flashing lights and candles. Color Me Badd sings and dances while people dance around them. Color Me Badd performs in the music video "Heartbreaker" from the album "C.M.B." recorded for Giant and Reprise Records. The music video opens at a darkened dance club illuminated by flashing lights and candles. Color Me Badd sings and dances while people dance around them.

• Color Me Badd
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