Babyface

Babyface (Kenneth Edmonds) is one of the most prominent figures in R&B, producer, songwriter and performer. Kenneth was born on April 10, 1958 in Indianapolis. He began performing with the local R&B bands as a teenager. It was the Bootsy Collins group where he received his Babyface nickname, the future stage name. The artist made his first big steps with Manchild, the outfit that released three albums on the breach of the seventies and eighties. After the demise of the band, Babyface cofounded The Deele to produce a few popular songs spotted in R&B charts. In 1988, Babyface and his partner Antonio Reid quit the group and launched the famous LaFace label. Both took up producing and songwriting for other performers.

At that time, the music career of Babyface had moderate results. His debut solo album, Lovers, saw light in 1986 to find low interest. However, as an established producer and songwriter after cooperation with several stars, he managed to draw attention to his subsequent work Tender Lover (1989). The album squeezed to the charts with the smashes It's No Crime, and Whip Appeal and ranked double platinum. Following that, Babyface focused once again on creating material for many artists, including the celebrated Celine Dion and Madonna. His composition End of the Road for Boyz II Men was one of the longest pop chart-toppers of that time. LaFace worked hard too to produce the works of Toni Braxton, TLC and Usher.

Only in 1993, Babyface found time to prepare his third album, For the Cool in You. The acoustic ballad When Can I See You Again appeared a sensation to enter Top 5, while the CD became triple platinum. The same year, the artist won his first Grammy. In two years, he produced the excellent soundtrack to the movie Waiting to Exhale. He wrote all the featured songs, including Whitney Houston’s Exhale (Shoop, Shoop). It was the year when he grabbed Grammy as Best Producer. I 1996, the artist’s career kept climbing high to the top. Babyface released a very powerful album, entitled The Day and received another Grammy for producing Eric Clapton’sChange the World.

In the mid-nineties, Babyface and his wife, Tracy Edmonds, founded their own film producing company. It debuted in 1997 with the comedy Soul Food, soundtrack, naturally, written by Babyface. Occupied heavily with cinematography, Babyface reduced his music activity. Thus, the following MTV Unplugged (1997), and Christmas with Babyface (1998) were live records instead of studio works and could not compete with their predecessors. The producing activity was as energetic as always before, while the music productivity kept sinking. After a long pause, the artist released the compilation A Collection of His Greatest Hits (2000). It was followed by Face2Face (2001). It took the artist four more years to release the next studio album, Grown & Sexy, and in 2007, he issued Playlist composed by covers. With the lack of time, Babyface was able to release in 2009 only the compilation From the Heart. Nevertheless, this person’s contribution to the contemporary music is not only his own albums, but also a great and prominent job done in the frames of different activities. Moreover, these activities are far from their end.