Can’t Cool It Now: New Edition Hit A Whole New Level (Oooh Watch Out!)

New Edition, the hot-stepping R&B act that many of us first fell in love with during the glorious Eighties, are today finding success on a whole new level with major honors and accolades amassing along “The New Edition Way Tour.”

Ronnie DeVoe, Bobby Brown, Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, Ralph Tresvant and Johnny Gill are headlining the arena package tour and performing intertwined sets with Boyz II Men and Toni Braxton. Named for their new street dedication in their hometown of Roxbury, MA, “The New Edition Way Tour” is promoted by the independent Black Promoters Collective (BPC). The tour is currently No. 6 on  Pollstar Live 75, which ranks worldwide active tours by average ticket sales during a 30-day period. According to 149 Pollstar Box Office Reports dating back to June 2002, New Edition has grossed over $104 million through March of 2026. Recently, their sold-out Feb. 13 show at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ grossed $2,224,082 playing before 13,136 with tickets ranging from $56 – $207.

The arena tour began at the Oakland Arena on Jan. 28 as a 30-city outing, and wraps ostensibly at Houston’s Toyota Center on April. 4. though ore engagements are likely to come. Adding to their spectacular year, this past Feb. 25, New Edition was announced as a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominee. Winners are determined by a combination of an official voting body and fan votes. New Edition climbed up several places on the 2026 Fan Vote Leaderboard this week, a testament to their fans. As of this writing (Mar. 5), New Edition is in second place — just behind Phil Collins. 

New Edition performed in Cleveland, where the Rock Hall is based, just days before the nominations were unveiled. DeVoe shares that he made a video while in the city, trying to manifest the honor, and was startled that it happened so quickly.

“Like yo, I’m speaking this into existence,” DeVoe said. “‘One of these days we’re going to be inside.’ And it’s crazy because three days later, we get the nod and the nomination.”

DeVoe credits the NE4Life fan club for driving interest in honors such as this and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “Our fans, they push and they ride for us heavy and strong,” he says.

“I would tell you that this has been at the top of my bucket list, for them to get this hit,” says Brooke Payne, the CEO/President of 617 Management. Payne is not only New Edition’s longtime manager, creative director and choreographer of all those legendary, soulful dance steps, he actually named the then-boys New Edition and trademarked it for them. And he’s family: DeVoe is Payne’s nephew.

“I think the key is that they have a great following and their fans will go and do whatever they’ve got to do for this group,” Payne explains. “That’s the love that they give, and the group shares that love back. And everybody on the tour is also grabbing new fans. Like, a Toni fan may not have been a New Edition fan, but leaves the show being a New Edition fan, and vice versa with everybody. So the package is what’s making everyone get out and have such a great time. The entertainment is so fulfilling to people and it’s showing by these votes that are coming out. It’s just simply the love for the group and I thank God for it.”

Despite touring arenas for years, Payne believes the current production represents a peak moment for New Edition.

“Things are all about timing and it really feels like it’s their time,” he says. “I’m like a proud dad or a proud big brother or a proud uncle. I’m really feeling that for the whole thing of us from day one to today. There is something special, something different happening right now. It’s different now just because of the state of the world, first and foremost. There’s so many different things going on, politics and so on and so forth. We just got a war that dropped and people are still coming out of COVID, still looking for the things that allow them to leave all that alone for a moment.”

New Edition credits Payne as the genius at the nucleus of everything, and a strong business team to keep them performing at a high level.

“Teamwork makes the dream work, and that’s the reality for us,” says Johnny Gill, “And that’s why we’re still doing what we do. We understand the importance of having a good, solid team that’s just as important as us being on that stage, because people don’t see what goes on behind the scenes and what it takes to prepare and put this thing on the road to get it to where it is. We make a conscious effort with our team and the people we bring in here to help represent us.”

“Yeah, that’s about building bridges too,” adds DeVoe. “We’re in this for the long haul. And, fortunately, we’re here over 40 years later. Plus, as Johnny said, those relationships that we’ve built based on our team and what we do on stage are very vital and important. We want people to feel like the experience is pleasant when we come back around. And it’s definitely intentional who we surround ourselves with.”

The tour schedule includes lot of back to back nights, which has prompted some homesickness, admits Ricky Bell, who has a young baby. He touts the benefits of staying ready for this kind of pace.

“We’ve been preparing for this moment for 40 years,” Bell says. “So that part is the fun part for us, especially being in front of the audience and feeling that energy. Some nights we go on stage, we feel tired — just not being able to get enough rest. But once the lights go down and we rise up on that stage and we see all the phone lights and we have our in-ears, but we have mics in the audience so we can actually still hear the crowd scream and all of that—that just gives you instant energy.”

Payne loves watching the crowd work the dance moves. 

“I spend all the time watching the audience do those steps,” he says. “That’s the joy that I get because when I’m putting together the show, I’m putting it together with the audience in mind. So if there’s certain things that happen that I’m doing, because I want them to scream and they do scream, that’s successful right there. So I’m constantly watching the audience more than I’m watching the show and the guys, because I know what that’s doing. I’m watching to see how they react.

“When they’re doing the choreography, the hand swing, that reminds me of ‘Thriller,’” he adds. “When that came and everybody did that part [swings hands like the zombies], it reminds me of that. To really see a whole audience doing that is so incredible to me.” 

“We basically have been running through this tour and enjoying it as much as we possibly can every night, because we work every night,” Bobby Brown says. “It’s just been a joy to be around your brothers and your sisters and enjoying being on the road, getting on a tour bus and going to sleep and waking up in a new city and knowing that you have a show is something we enjoy, but it’s also work.”

As for staying fit on the road, Brown points out that there’s a gym in every hotel they stay in.

“Not that all of us go to it,” he smiles.

New Edition fans return to live shows tour after tour because of their music, masterful, non-stop dancing, harmonious singing, clothes and stage design. In the case of “The New Edition Way Tour,” that means a 360-degree stage that is worked from every part of the circle.

Performing below the stage and away from the public view, the group’s longtime DJ Shakim plays a vital role in the group underpinning the pace and excitement of the show.

“I think he’s one of the best in the business,” says Payne of DJ Shakim. “He’s a security blanket also. First and foremost, his talent as a DJ is incredible. He knows how to move a crowd and that’s his whole thing and his purpose in there is that he sits in with the band. But he’s also the security that musically, if anything was to ever happen musically with the band or what have you, Shakim can run the show. Like, just that simple.

“I think people just don’t have enough confidence in their DJ within the show and really know that the DJ is not simply a DJ. He’s part of the band. And that’s the most important thing when you place him as part of the musicians, because that’s what he is. He’s not there just because he scratches records. He’s a musician. His timing is impeccable to know what needs to go where and how and what keeps the beat and all of that. He’s a very big part. We would never do anything without him.”

Black Promoters Collective, an independent promoter which formed in 2020, has worked with New Edition for the past three tours with its tour and production managers working across the country with various iterations of the NE family for decades.

“For them to still choose to work with African-American promoters and not farm out to some of the other players that we know that typically suck up all the artists that can put $2 million grosses in the room, it’s been a real privilege for us to have that,” says Gary Guidry, CEO of BPC, which has worked with New Edition and its family of acts for decades. “It’s them saying, we’re going to stay and just represent the culture and make sure that we’re working with people that truly understand our brand. And it’s really, really working. You can look at the recap videos night after night on our social channels and see our ability to deeply connect with the audience and tell that story.

“And not just be about the hype of the show and the production value, but also translate that to what that culturally means to that person, that patron that’s sitting in the seat, to bring out the storytelling of what ‘Candy Girl’ meant to that woman who was a little girl at the moment. We make sure that we make that connection and how we storytell, because it’s not just about the song, the hit, the record, the next city. It’s about what that moment in time meant to them that night, what memory it brought, where did it take them emotionally? The fan girl that was eight-years-old, 10-years-old, 14-years-old, and now they’re 55, they’re 58-years-old, and they’re still in love like they’re 12.”

If the Oakland tour opener was any indication, New Edition fans in their 50s, 60s and 70s still come out to see them, but they’re also noticing and loving a resurgence of kids who know the dance moves in the audience. 

“To be able to go back out on stage,” Devoe says, “and give a little kid like that your T-shirt that you sign right off the stage and to be able to meet them afterwards and potentially inspire and give them something to hope for and wish for whether or not they want to get into entertainment or not, just the humility of being able to meet people like that who have poured into us for decades now. Those fans, and hearing the different stories about how many times they’ve been to the shows and what [one of our hits] did for them at a bar mitzvah or a wedding or whatever that is, is still one of those things that keeps us coming back to the stage.”

New Edition is already having an amazing year in the live music business. But, at the heart of the organization, Brooke Payne is still hoping to score ever-bigger goals.

“The next one on my bucket list is the Super Bowl — a Super Bowl with the NE family,” he says. “When people think of New Edition, they don’t really grab on to the fact that they’re a supergroup and there’s not another other group that has done these many entities within the one group. I’d love to see that on the Super Bowl because that’s such a big production: how they bring that out there, do that in 15 minutes and then it disappears. I would love to see the whole NE experience happen in that place.”