I grew up going to the Maryland Zoo with my family, but I didn't know the name of the park where the zoo is located, Druid Hill Park, until four local teenagers -- Sisqo, Nokio, Jazz, and Woody Rock -- named themselves Dru Hill and became a platinum-selling R&B group in the mid-'90s. I vaguely remember snickering at a segment on the early fluffier iteration of "The Daily Show" where they were talking about music videos, including "In My Bed," and kept referring to Sisqo as Dru, as if that was his name.

And really, in my last 2 decades of writing about Baltimore music, I don't know if anyone has really made it big out of the city on the same level as Dru Hill and Sisqo since them. I've written quite a bit about the group's latter day activities -- the reunion that imploded live on local radio, the public audition for a new member, the triumphant headlining set at Artscape, the 2010 comeback album, and so on. But I've never really written about their back catalog before. This month, Dru Hill released "What You Need," the first single with two new members, Smoke and Black from another '90s group, Playa, who joined Sisqo and Nokio in 2018. The song is pretty good, hopefully the new album The Second Coming due out this year will be up to the same standard.

Dru Hill deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Nothing To Prove
2. What Do I Do With The Love
3. Do U Believe?
4. If I Could
5. Whatever U Want featuring Triip
6. Real Freak featuring Chinky Brown Eyes
7. Do It Again
8. Xstacy Jones
9. Fireplace
10. Below Zero
11. I Do (Millions)
12. Love's Train
13. Holding You
14. I'll Be The One
15. She Said
16. Men Always Regret
17. April Showers
18. Angel
19. Share My World

Tracks 1, 3, 5, 12, 17 and 19 from Dru Hill (1996)
Tracks 2, 6, 13, 14 and 18 from Enter The Dru (1998)
Tracks 4, 8, 15 and 16 from Dru World Order (2002)
Tracks 7 and 10 from InDRUpendence Day (2010)
Track 9 from Christmas In Baltimore EP (2017)

I've occasionally done playlists in this series combining a group's catalog with a member's solo work. And Dru Hill doesn't have that many albums, so I thought about throwing some Sisqo tracks in here. But I kind of feel like the group was and is great in its own right and sometimes gets a little unfairly overshadowed by its most famous member. I think because of Sisqo's big voice and loud look, people kind of imagined he wanted the spotlight all for himself, that going solo was as much an inevitability for him as it was for Beyonce or Justin Timberlake. But to hear Sisqo tell it in recent 20th anniversary interviews about Unleash The Dragon, he never really wanted to go solo and the group was his top priority. But after Woody Rock left the group the first time in 1999, Sisqo held out hope that he'd come back in time for the group's 3rd album (which he ultimately did, before leaving again in 2008), and Sisqo apparently did the solo album to keep the group's label from losing interest in them. And it was cool that Sisqo often incorporated the members of the group into his solo albums, videos, and TV performances. And the "your eyes, unique, your breasts, your feet" bit from "Thong Song" was actually a callback to the Enter The Dru deep cut "Real Freak."

And even though Sisqo sang lead more often than not on the group's hits, harmonies were always their bread and butter, and all the members of the group got the spotlight on album tracks. So towards the end of the playlist, I put together a block of tracks that showcase the other guys: Jazz on "Holding You" and I'll Be The One," Nokio on "She Said" and "Men Always Regret" (which he wrote and sings with Sisqo), and Woody Rock on "April Showers" and "Angel." Scola aka Ruscola, who initially joined to replace Woody Rock and stayed on as a 5th member for Dru World Order, never really got a lot of lead vocal shine, but he co-wrote 3 songs, including "If I Could" and the hit "I Love You," and had local hits on Baltimore radio as a solo artist.

I was curious who the female rapper Triip was who had a verse on "Whatever U Want" -- really I wanted to know if she was one of the group's friends from Baltimore. Turns out Saeida "Triip" Hall was from Brooklyn and had a brief career that included one solo single, a posse cut with Lauryn Hill and Bahamadia, and an appearance on Stretch & Bobbito, before she seemingly exited the music industry following her appearance on Dru Hill's platinum debut. I like her rapping, makes me wonder what kind of career she could've had.

One thing that surprised me about Dru Hill's catalog is that outside of the Babyface-penned "These Are The Times," most of their songs with notable outside songwriters weren't released as singles. Diane Warren wrote "What Do I Do With The Love," Bryan-Michael Cox co-wrote "If I Could," and Case and TQ co-wrote "Xstacey Jones." Keith Sweat produced 2 songs on their debut, "Love's Train" and "Share My World" (no relation to the title track of the album Mary J. Blige released a few months later), and later the InDRUpendence Day single "Remain Silent." 2002's "I Do (Millions)" was co-written and co-produced by Baltimore producer Sean "Moccaa" Banks, who I met a few years later when he was working with local rap star D.O.G. and Baltimore club music legend DJ Booman.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 2:15 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.