Color Me Badd - C.M.B. (Expanded Edition) (2021)

The urban contemporary market can be incredibly fickle. While Color Me Badd was the toast of the urban world in 1991, the interracial quartet was all but forgotten a few years later. In the age of videos, Badd's image proved very marketable (for a while, anyway). But in general, its songs were far from remarkable, and its singing wasn't great by any means. This debut album which soared to triple platinum sales thanks to some very aggressive marketing on the part of veteran music industry exec Irving Azoff's Giant Records does have its moments, including the hit slow jams "I Adore Mi Amor" and "I Wanna Sex You Up" (which samples rapper Slick Rick in a rather clever fashion). But most of the songs are pedestrian and generic. There's little or nothing to distinguish cliché-ridden numbers like "Roll the Dice" or "Heartbreak" from the countless other new jack swing songs flooding the market in the early '90s. And all the "cool videos" in the world can't erase the CD's many weaknesses.