Signing to Island Records through Haqq Islam's University Records imprint, Dru Hill released two successful LPs before separating for a period from late 1999 to 2002, during which time Sisqó and Woody released solo albums.
While Woody's Soul Music LP was a moderate success in the gospel music industry, Sisqó's Unleash the Dragon LP and its hit single "Thong Song" were major pop successes, and established Sisqó as a household name outside of Dru Hill. In 2002, by then part of the Def Soul record label, the group reunited and added fifth member Rufus "Scola" Waller to the lineup for their third LP, Dru World Order.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. 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). 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. 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. Moreover, the group’s debut was remarkably and infectiously theatrical-that is, both hyperbolically expressive and narrative-driven. Many of the songs on Dru Hill tell love stories with an emphasis on all things sad: tales of loneliness, heartbreak and death. 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. 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.
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. 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”). 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. 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.
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