Babyface doing “Thnks Fr Th Mmrs” with Chante Moore, Avery Wilson and Tank for Tiny Desk.
R&B singers Tank, Chanté Moore and Avery Wilson joined Babyface on vocals. His band consisted of music director Erskine Hawkins III on the keyboards, Antoine Porter on guitar, Walt Barnes Jr. on bass and Reggie Regg playing drums.
Before launching into Karyn White’s “Superwoman,” for which Moore took over lead singing duties, Babyface said that, growing up, “I was always falling in love and getting my heart broke and stuff.” (That garnered “awwws” from the crowd.) “I would be writing these sad songs, and I realized I was probably feeling the same hurt of all the girls that you was hurting,” he said, jokingly gesturing to Tank.
Babyface talks about Whitney Houston and performs “Exhale (Shoop Shoop)” with Tank, Avery Wilson and Chanté Moore on NPR Tiny Desk:
“The funny thing about this song, when I worked with Whitney on ‘Exhale’ … originally when we sat down to talk about doing the project, she wasn’t going to sing at all,” he said of the 1995 film starring Houston and Angela Bassett, for which he wrote and produced the soundtrack. “She said, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to do this, Face. You do the music, and we’ll see what happens.’ For the longest time I hadn’t started to write this song because I didn’t know whether she was going to sing. And then finally she said she was going to sing, and that kind of explains why on the chorus there’s no real lyrics, because I hadn’t gotten to that part yet.”
The 64-year-old then welcomed Moore to lead on “Superwoman,” the 1989 song that Edmonds co-wrote for vocalist Karyn White. The group continued with songs that Edmonds wrote for Madonna (“Take A Bow”), Mary J. Blige (“Not Gon’ Cry”), Tevin Campbell (“Can We Talk”), Fall Out Boy (“Thnks fr th Mmrs”), Boyz II Men (“”I’ll Make Love To You,” “End Of The Road”) before concluding with the late Whitney Houston’s “Exhale (Shoop Shoop).”
Edmonds, who recently had a messy tour stop with Anita Baker, released his ninth studio album Girls Night Out last October. The 13-track album exclusively featured female and non-binary artists including Ella Mai (“Keeps On Fallin’”), Coco Jones (“Simple”), Muni Long (“The Recipe”), Kehlani (“Seamless”), Doechii (“Girls Night Out”) and more…
Babyface went on Tiny Desk and stacked the deck with his background vocalists.
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