Five Minutes With Boyz II Men
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On Tuesday night, Boyz II Men was getting ready to take the stage at the Africa Center for a fund-raiser supporting Charlize Theron’s Africa Outreach Project. In between harmonizing and preparing to woo the dinner crowd with roses, WWD caught up with the iconic R&B group, which is about to head out on an international tour before closing out the year in Sacramento, Calif., on New Year’s Eve.
So I hear you guys are going on tour to Asia and Africa soon?
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Nathan Morris: “We start in Kuala Lumpur and then end up in Lagos. We try to make it a point to get to our Asian audience as much as possible. And Africa is another one of those continents when everything is right we love to go there, so we’re looking forward to it. It’s about three weeks full of running around and then we end up somewhere in Sacramento on New Year’s. ‘We go where the love is,’ is what we always say.”
Are there any countries in Africa that you’re particularly looking forward to visiting?
Shawn Stockman: “We’ve been wanting to go to Egypt for the longest, and we’ve just never had the opportunity, because every time we would plan a date, either something would happen with the promoter or a war would break out. So hopefully we’ll get a chance to go to Egypt one day, because I think everybody’s goal is to one day see the pyramids and take that trip.”
In addition to touring, what projects are you guys working on?
S.S.: “As far as records, we haven’t been in the studio as a group much. We like to do special projects like the one we did with Steep Canyon Rangers, because we just thought it was just a cool idea. It was something they presented to us again and we were like, hey, why not. We’re musicians at heart, and we like to do things that keep our hearts pumping, so that was a cool project. We still have Vegas at the Mirage until 2021, and tour is our field of trade. We like to stay like the wind.”
Do you have holiday plans in between all of the touring?
N.M.: “I think we end up right back home before Christmas and Hanukkah, right at the end of it. We haven’t really made any plans per se, because once we get back from that run we’ll literally be preparing to get out, it’s only a week away to get to Sacramento and get to work. We’re normally on the road at that time, but this is one of those times where we get to be home. So I’m sure we’ll find something to do for a couple of days, but again we’ll be right back out two days before New Year’s Eve and right back to work. We’ll have a little bit of downtime in January, so we’ll make up for it.
“It’s good to be at that point of your career where everything’s not dependent on what’s structural and how things always go. We can move wherever we want to go.”
Wanyá Morris: “We’re riding our own waves.”
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