Let the music play on
Next:Money tears the group apart.
The group was formed in 1992 in Minneapolis by two brothers "Terry (T low )Brown" and "Raphael (Tweety)Brown", according to the brothers because of the physical abuse they suffered from their Mother they found refuge in going for choir practice in the church and this led to their musical skills being developed. Which apart from voice training also included learning how to play musical instruments.
A few miles away in Minneapolis another teenager named Robert "RL Huggar” who lived in a more Stable home and had passion for music but his ambition clashed with what his father wanted for him, his father wanted him to be an Engineer, RL despite his father's disapproval forged on with his Musical career by competing in local competitions and was always winning the competitions
The 3 future band members had a common older acquaintance Reverend James Grear who set Up a meeting between the Browns, RL Huggar and another friend of TLow named Malon Shiloh Benjamin, and named their band Straightforward. They were all in the beginning managed by Ann Nesby of the “Sound of Blackness”,
Sound of Blackness ( image C/o BBC)
By the time they got to doing their demo tapes, they had to cut Shilo out because he was finding it hard to sing harmonies and that's when they decided to change the name from straightforward to Next. After cutting the demo tape it got to the ears of Kaygee of “Naughty by Nature”
Naugty by nature ( image c/o pinterest)
who signed them on to his Production /Record company named “Divine Mill” an affiliate of Arista Records where they cut their debut Album "Rated Next" in 1997, this album had two hit singles ” Butta love” and “Too close”, these two singles did very well on the charts and helped the album to sell more than two Million copies. In the year 2000 the group released their sophomore album titled “welcome II Nextasy” and that went Gold they did so many tours to promote the album and took a long break after the tour
Next Album Sleeve ( image c/o CSP Music Group)
The beginning of the end for Next came in 1992, when RL claimed he went to Clive Davis to Play him tracks he thinks Next would use on their 3rd album but Clive said he should forget about another album for Next now and that he was interested in giving him a solo deal and also a huge amount of money to cut an album, an offer which RL accepted and he claimed he told the two brothers about it, but they denied that they did not know about the meeting or the recording of the album until it was released, this made the brothers to part ways with RL and continue as a duo, unfortunately for RL the album was of moderate success.
By 2002 the Brown brothers and RL came back together to fulfil their contractual obligations to release their 3rd album by titled the ” Next episode” which did not do well unlike the first two albums, reason being the trust issues which had come in between RL and the brothers which did not let everyone put in their best in terms of inputs like they did on their first two albums.
