' 𝗬𝗢𝗨 𝗦𝗘𝗡𝗗 𝗠𝗘 𝗦𝗪𝗜𝗡𝗚𝗜𝗡 ' › D. SWING

29.

DeVante.

I've tried contacting Rhonda for a week now, and I still had no luck. I was running low on options, deciding to just travel back to Los Angeles to meet up with Dalvin, JoJo, and K-Ci to work on the album. Apparently, BET wanted to film us for some shit called Docugroove, so cameras would be following us around and whatnot while we work. I wasn't too fond of tv stuff but since the fans requested it, I figured I'd make best of it for them.

"So DeVante, how did Jodeci come about?", the interviewer asked with the mic pointing toward my lips. Fuck. I hate being the talker. I wasn't very good at it.

"We got together—well, we used to–you know, we used to travel with two separate gospel groups. It's K-Ci and it's, you know, his gospel group and then it's me and Dalvin and we was in my dad's group, and then we had our own band. And, everybody always told us about K-Ci and JoJo, you know, y'all oughta' hook up. So one day I was like well, lemme' go meet them. I went to go meet them and became good friends wit'em. We still wasn't an official group, like, for a whole year but we were recordin' together. I came to JoJo and was like 'Yo, I'm about to make a group, why don't you get down?' I wrote a song for my best friend at the time, Rhonda Baker, and JoJo got down. That's how it started", I replied with a slight shrug.

"Was gospel carried into your current music in some way? How did you go from Gospel to New Jack Swing?", she asked, smiling over at me.

"In gospel, we was considered the bad boys of gospel. All of us", I started to say, shrugging my shoulders once again as I smiled back. "I don't know the switch. I don't know how that came about. We just started writing songs about girls, put our name on it, and it just...", I said, trailing off since I didn't know what else to say.

"Gotcha'. How does it feel when people call you the bad boys of r&b?"

I laughed a little, "Call us whatever you want. I just make music, you know? I ain't—I'm not tryna' be a bad boy, I'm tryna' be who I am. If that's what you wanna' call me—they call us rebels, because why'd we go against the grain?"

"People love the idea of bad boys and rebels. Like Bad Boy Records, for example. There's a lot of violence within the music industry lyrically and physically because of it but you guys aren't violent at all."

"I don't think people should praise gettin' in trouble, I don't think people should say, you know—I think people get wrapped up in their music so much that they wanna' actually live it out or whatever. You know you sign a rap group and you talk about, you know, killin' or whatever—and you get wrapped into that, you know? First of all, I wouldn't–I wouldn't even sign a rap group talkin' about that. Talkin' about violence, promotin'...you know? I'm not–I'm not into that at all. Uh, you know, I don't think if they do it, they should get caught into it. I don't think, you know, when trouble comes they should act like they're not concerned about it. You know what I'm sayin'? I see a lot of 'em on television after they get locked up or whatever and they act like they don't care. I know that's just a role, I know they care. They shouldn't, you know, they shouldn't go to the public with that", I responded, getting tired of answering all of these questions. Especially questions about Puffy's biting ass. He took our whole concept of who we are and made a label all while taking credit for how we wanted to dress. As far as I was concerned, fuck Puffy. He was bad at business which is why he got fired from Uptown in the first place.

"How do you feel about Death Row Records' artists? Don't you think they do the same thing?"

Here we go. "I don't think Snoop is really a hard...you know, he's not really a hard rapper talkin' about killin', you know? His music is just fun. I like Snoop and Tupac? You know, his last song 'Keep Ya Head Up' was positive to me. I don't know what happened but...I don't know, you know? I listen to all of 'em."