The Start Of The Road: New Edition, Boyz II Men, Toni Braxton Open 30-City Tour At Oakland Arena (Review)

Significantly, Oakland Arena in the Bay Area on Jan. 28 was selected as the opening city for the 30-stop “New Edition Way Tour,” which co-stars their protégés and now longtime friends Boyz II Men and Toni Braxton and concludes on Mar. 20 at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. New Edition previously performed four other times at Northern California’s 20K-cap mixed use venue, and always receive loud love from the locals. Here, seemingly sipping from the fountain of youth, New Editions’ Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, Bobby Brown, Ronnie DeVoe, Johnny Gill and Ralph Tresvant pack unwavering lead vocals and strong steps.

Presented by the Black Promoters Collective, “The New Edition Way Tour,” in honor of a street in their hometown of Boston recently renamed New Edition Way, offers a creatively-arranged, high-value show drawing on a mix of the best ballads and uptempo dancefloor shakers from these beloved Platinum performers’catalogs. Instead of each act playing full successive sets, the set list is arranged as a DJ would to build up energy and drop constant surprises as they collaborate and come on and offstage. For example, New Edition joined Boyz II Men (Nathan Morris, Wanyà Morris, and Shawn Stockman) for the latter’s blockbuster “Motownphilly” and later appeared together at the beginning for a new jam “We Going Out Tonight.”

New Edition has long carried on the sharp sartorial, choreographic and vocal traditions of predecessors like The Temptations and Four Tops. More than a few audience members knew the steps to classics like “If It Isn’t Love” and all the vocal inflections of “Mr. Telephone Man” and “Candy Girl.”

Two screens were juxtaposed smartly showing nostalgic video footage of each act alongside what was happening live. The artists are now all in their fifties and continue to draw multiple generations, though the 30 and under demographic wasn’t quite as loud as the 60 and over crowd, when the congenial tour DJ Shakim asked for our ages. Shakim and the band performed from the pit beneath the stage.

Boyz II Men were ever-gallant, bringing long-stemmed red roses to throw to ladies cheering from every angle of the 360-degree stage. Morris, Morris and Stockman have taken loving care of their vocal chords, and reminded of their consummate professionalism while singing signifiers like “I’ll Make Love to You,” “Water Runs Dry,” “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday” and “End of the Road.”

Toni Braxton revealed that doctors didn’t think she’d ever perform live again due to complications from having the autoimmune disease lupus and dedicated a portion of her set to her late sister Traci, who passed away from esophageal cancer in 2022. But there she was, sizzling on stage with pitch-perfect renditions of hits like “You’re Making Me High” and “He Wasn’t Man Enough for Me.”

She may not have a full set’s worth of energy these days, she admitted, but said, “I still have a good 50 minutes in me!” And she appeared to relish them all, as did the audience.

There were multiple glittering costume changes for each reappearance on stage, including a giant pair of angel wings worn to sing “Un-Break My Heart.” It was an otherworldly moment when this tear-streaked writer questioned if she was actually in reality.

After a memoriam honoring artists who passed in the last year, including Ozzy Osbourne, the nearly 40 song set stepped on the gas of an already high-octane show to close out with the solo and side act anthems that still rock any party: Johnny Gill’s “Rub You the Right Way,” Bobby Brown’s “Every Little Step” and “My Prerogative” and Bell Biv DeVoe’s “Poison.” Smack it up, flip it, rub it down forever.