This song was big for me in 1994 and it recently started getting stuck in my head again, all these years later.
A few thoughts.
I never knew how popular any particular song (U Will Know by Black Men United) was and therefore never knew if this was a big hit or not. With 7 million plays on youtube it appears it wasn't very popular.
This is one of those "everyone gets together for charity" things that was so popular back then. Such a thing is mocked now but I think it holds up.
On the song are Tevin Campbell, El DeBarge, Gerald Levert, Tony Toni Toné, Boyz II Men, Al B. Sure!, Lenny Kravitz, R. Kelly, Brian McKnight, Silk, Keith Sweat, Usher, D'Angelo and many other people. Who would have thought that the most remembered 30 years later would be R. Kelly. Yikes.
Tevin Campbell. Remember Tevin Campbell. Man, that takes me back. I wonder what he's doing these days.
I always took for granted that this was a Gospel song. Reading the lyrics now, it has nothing to do with it, it's basically just motivational speaking. They still have a certain strength, I think, probably due to the music.
I have one big problem with the video. At 1:24, when the lyrics say "boys to men" they cut to video of Boys II Men. I want to take the editor aside and say, "Come on, man. Too obvious."
As you can see in the video, this song was made for the movie "Jason's Lyric" which I don't think I've ever seen. I always get "Jason's Lyric" confused with "Poetic Justice". I might have to watch "Jason's Lyric" to settle the score.
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