In the early 1990s, Color Me Badd was the boy band to beat. Their debut hit song, “I Wanna Sex You Up” dominated the airwaves and even scored them a cameo appearance on “Beverly Hills: 90210.” Although the original group only had one Black member, their hip hop take on old-school doo wop style catapulted them straight to the top of the R&B charts.
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But with their increased popularity came internal issues, including the lead singer’s struggles with addiction, that ultimately led them to go their separate ways in 1998, and when they attempted to make a comeback nearly 20 years later, an awful on-stage confrontation between two of the founding members ended things for good.
This is the story of Color Me Badd.
Oklahoma Natives
The original members of Color Me Badd, Bryan Abrams, Mark Calderon, Kevin Thornton, and Sam Watters, met singing in a choir as high school students in their native Oklahoma City. Inspired by the success of 1980s boy bands like New Edition and New Kids on the Block, they worked overtime to perfect their harmonies.
In 1985, they started their group with the name Take One, but rebranded themselves as Color Me Badd to avoid being confused with the already established gospel group Take 6.
Their Big Break
The guys got their first big break in 1990, when they saw Bon Jovi members Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora at Oklahoma City’s Penn Square Mall multiplex. The guys wasted no time shooting their shot and asked the rockers if they could sing for them on the spot.
“And we started singing ‘Daddy’s Home,’ and I could see his eyes as we were singing, ‘Wow, these guys can really sing,’” Mark Calderon told The Oklahoma Gazette.
After their spontaneous performance, Bon Jovi asked Color Me Badd to open for them at a local performance the following night.
“I Wanna Sex You Up”
After their 18th birthdays, the guys moved to New York City to pursue their dream full-time. Color Me Badd scored their breakout hit in 1991, with the smooth single “I Wanna Sex You Up,” which was featured on the “New Jack City” soundtrack. The song soared to number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at the top spot of the R&B charts.
Betty Wright Called Them Out
But while Color Me Badd’s single was blowing up on the charts, not everyone was loving it, including soul singer Betty Wright, who pointed out that “I Wanna Sex You Up” was nothing but a rip off of her 1970s hit, “Tonight is the Night.”
Wright sued the song’s producer, Dr. Freeze, for illegally sampling one of her live performances. She won her case and 35 percent of the song’s royalties.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Wright had a mic drop message for Dr. Freeze during one of her shows, rapping:
“Baby, that ain’t sampling, that’s stealing.
What’s the matter, can’t you write with no feeling?
You oughta come clean with the real deal;
If you had real talent, you wouldn’t have to steal.
Dr. Freeze, that was cold, but stop in your tracks
You stole my song, now I’m taking it back!”
Hip Hop Doo Wop
After the success of “I Wanna Sex You Up,” Giant Records gave the group less than a month to record their debut album, “C.M.B.” The album went triple platinum and produced other hits for the group, including “I Adore Mi Amore” and “All For Love.” The group established their sound as hip hop doo wop, and in the age of MTV, Color Me Badd, a multi-racial group of good looking guys with soulful voices was a recipe for success.
Breaking Up
As the group’s success was taking off, cracks began to form in the foundation, including singer Bryan Abrams’ struggles with addiction to food, drugs and alcohol.
“For years we all tried to manage his drinking,” Color Me Badd band member Mark Calderon told Dr. Phil. “Nothing works.
Meanwhile, Kevin Thornton was growing to distrust the group’s management, and dealing with issues with sex addiction.
“You could place a table full of drugs or bottles of alcohol right in front of me, and that wouldn’t even faze me, but if you put a stripper on that table, I’m sweating bullets,” he told The Oklahoma Gazette. “If I wanted to celebrate, I would do it with sex. If I was feeling down, I wanted to recover by utilizing sex. I would try to justify those actions.”
The problems became overwhelming, and the group officially broke up in 1998.
Going Their Own Way
After the group’s breakup, two of the founding members left to forge different paths. Kevin Thornton answered a call from the Lord and became a Christian minister.
Sam Watters, who was a co-writer on many of Color Me Badd’s songs went behind the scenes, writing and producing songs for artists like Fantasia, Leona Lewis and Celine Dion.
Getting Back Together
Calerdon and Abrams tried to reignite the magic of Color Me Badd in 2010 performing the group’s hits together. They later added a third member to the group, Adam Emil, and hit the road on an “I Love the 90s” tour with Vanilla Ice, Salt-N-Pepa and Tone Loc.
An On Stage Incident
But the group’s renewed relationship didn’t last long. Things came to a head during a 2018 performance in upstate New York when Bryan Adams stepped on stage at the end of performance and pushed Mark Calderon to the ground and screamed, “I’m motherf*ing Color Me Badd!”
Calderon told a Rochester, New York NBC affiliate that Abrams was drunk before the start of the show and had trouble singing along to the first song in the set. Abrams left the stage immediately after and didn’t come back until the end of the set to punch Calderon.
Abrams was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault.
Still Singing
These days, Mark Calderon is the only original member who performs as Color Me Badd. And while he doesn’t look like the same 1990s heartthrob, fans say he’s still got it.
“They definitely ate …… literally but seriously this was a darn good show,” wrote someone on TikTok.
Imploding From The Inside
When asked to reflect on where things went wrong, Sam Watters said he thinks their overnight success made it difficult to sustain.
“I think the only reason we didn’t make it long-term was because we kind of imploded from the inside,” Sam Watters told The Oklahoma Gazette. “It’s a real challenge to maintain that kind of thing. We were together for 14 years. Like anything else in life, when you’re moving up and you’re moving forward, everything is good because it’s relative to where you were before. But whenever you explode all of a sudden like that, and the next seven years are slowing going back in the other direction, that takes its toll.”
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