March 13, 2005 @ 11:30 pm

Online Exclusive: 112 Unveils Their Pain & Pleasure

Jalylah Burrell

Cupid doesn't lie, nor do Atlanta hip hop soul veterans 112. The forthright four — Q, Mike, Slim and Daron – spoke plainly of their nine-going-on-ten-year career as a black boy band before earnestly forecasting decades more in a recent conversation with VIBE.com. Witness to the rise and fall of crooners come and gone, the quartet feels pretty damn confident about the upcoming release of their fourth album, P

It's been almost a decade since you dropped your breakthrough single "Only You." How have you changed as individuals and artists? We've grown so much. You have got to think about it. When we first started in '96 we were teenagers. We hadn't gone through some relationship issues but like you said it's been almost ten years. We've been on the road. We've experienced life, love, pain, pleasure. We've experienced it all. So I think now at this point we were able to really really grasp hold of our experiences on this new album, Pleasure and Pain. It's just a true testament of the things that we've gone through. This album is not just songs; it's an album with substance. You are going to really listen to these titles, and the songs, and the lyrics and the substance of this album, and be touched because I know we're not the only people that have gone through these types of situations. Everybody can relate to them. Pop music is so youth driven with high energy dance oriented young male R&B groups tearing up the charts? How does it feel to be veterans and how do you plan to negotiate a much more crowded R&B playing field then when you first came out? Slim: I'm going to respectfully disagree with you because I don't think it's crowded. We're a singing group. Right now we're looking around. Since '96 when we first started it was Boys II Men, Jodeci, and Mint Condition. As far as the dancing, I think, other than New Edition there was a gap and then everybody started singing ballads. 112 was the first ones to start hitting the dance floor. After the "It's Over Now" video then came B2K. B2K's not here. I think that, 112, as long as we do what we do we'll still be here for eight to ten more years talking about the next batch of groups. It's funny for us hearing that question. You have to see it on our end that we've heard that question for eight years. I think our credibility and our music stands for itself. I think that if anything, the younger groups should look at us as a staple and as trendsetters and really aspire to last in the same game, last in the game as long if not longer. We see a lot of groups splitting up. We seen groups come and go. You were talking about a lot of groups splitting up versus 112 lasting so long. How have you managed to do that? Q: A lot of groups are manufactured. They're forced to live with each other, forced to like each other, forced to sing with each other and then when adversity comes, they don't have any bond or any love or strength to maintain and keep them together. Well, the one thing about 112 is before the money the fame and all that kind of stuff we were brothers and we had a genuine love for each other. So now when the adversity comes or when the pressure comes we're able to handle it as a unit and not just single anybody out. A lot of times people break up because of jealousy but in 112, no one person that does the bulk of the singing, no one person that does the bulk of the writing, no one person that gets more shine than the next because equally we're all contributors. When you add all those things up we're almost like the perfect group and the most explosive group because we all singing lead, we all write, we all dance, we all answer interviews, we all do everything. It's not in any way, form, or fashion unequal so that somebody can become jealous. You were the hallmark R&B group of Bad Boy until fairly recently. How are things with Def Soul and is there still any drama with Sean "P-Diddy' Combs? Daron: There's no drama with Bad Boy. The only drama that it was that caused us to switch was really the fact that we were signed to a production deal and the way that we alleviated the production deal was by coming to Def Jam and getting them to buy that out. Being a part of the Def Jam family has been good. We liking it over here with the addition of L.A. Reid as well as Jay-Z becoming the president. It was a great look for us because we're an R&B group but we have hip hop undertones in our music. With them two coming together and us being over here I think it came at the perfect time and its going to be real good for us this time around. Although you are all Atlanta natives, you always seemed to blend Northeastern and Southern sensibilities and sounds. Some of your big singles have featured hardcore NY rappers like Biggie or Mobb Deep. That seems to have helped you appeal to a broad range of audiences. Were you intentional about that and are we going to see similar collaborations in the future? Daron: We approach music from a marketing standpoint to a certain extent but we kind of just do what feels right. If a song calls for a person, we are going to call him in we're not going to just call him in because "I think this is going to appeal to the east coast or the southern market." It will really have to make sense for that song. We did some collaborations this time around, some unexpected things. We collaborated with T.I. - that wasn't really too much of an unexpected collaboration - but the one that I was speaking of was the one with Three 6 Mafia. We did a song with Three 6 Mafia. We did a song with Foxy Brown and Jay-Z. Q: Coming from Atlanta we really wasn't up on the hip hop and that's one thing we definitely can give a lot of the credit to puff. It was an even exchange. He really didn't know a lot about and understand R&B. It was like an even swap. We opened his eyes to R&B and he introduced us to hip hop. The Atlanta Crunk & B sound is wildly popular right now. What are your feelings on it and do you think you would incorporate it into your upcoming album? Daron: We feel like the Crunk & B sound is definitely innovative and it's definitely something new. A lot of artists are using that and latching on to that but we kind want to be innovators in our sound so we chose not to do that on the album. I think closing the club might be the closest song we got to the Crunk & B sound. It's a song where we collaborated with Three 6 Mafia. It's real hot. It's kind of bouncy but you know we really didn't want to be followers. I think the last album proved that we don't need to try to be followers because one of the singles on that last album we tried to catch that whole reggae wave and it wasn't the move for 112. We are just going to continue to be innovators and do something different. Tell me a little about the new album slated for a spring release? What is the title? What producers are you working with? Daron: The new album is called Pleasure and Pain. Some of the producers were of course myself Daron Jones, Mario Winans, Trackboyz, Warren Campbell and Darrell "Delite" Allamby. The first single is "U Already Know." Are you going be doing any touring to promote the new material? Q: We're starting a promotional run right now. In about a week and half from now we go to Europe. We'll do a tour over there for three weeks with Jagged Edge then we are going to come back maybe for a week, go to Australia and then come back and hit the U.S. really, really hard. We're letting everybody know that the album is coming Pleasure and Pain, March 29th. And it's something that you definitely need to have. Audio: 112 - "U Already Know"

Article tags: Online, Exclusive, 112, Unveils, Their, Pain, Pleasure 

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