Going Backstage, and Back to the Past
Jonathan Mannion

How have we gotten along without “Behind the Music”? One answer, of course, is YouTube, where you can watch those lip-synching fakers in Milli Vanilli running offstage over and over again, like a skipping recording.

You no longer need to keep an eye on the television listings for the famous Milli Vanilli episode that inaugurated “Behind the Music,” and indeed this 12-year-old VH1 series stopped regularly producing new shows in 2006, a year after YouTube started.

Now it’s back with a six-week run of premieres beginning Thursday night. Departing from past norms, all six of the subjects are active, or at least alive, and four of them are black; historically the percentage of African-American artists on the show has been below 20 percent. There’s a new emphasis on hip-hop superstars: three of the six episodes cover Lil Wayne, 50 Cent and T. I.

It’s good that the show is moving away from being Behind the Aging White Mainstream. Another development isn’t as welcome, though: four of the subjects — 50 Cent, T. I., Bobby Brown and Bret Michaels — have starred in reality shows for VH1 or its sister networks MTV and CMT. So now we get Behind the Viacom Synergy.

The reboot begins with Lil Wayne, the 27-year-old Miami-by-way-of-New Orleans rapper who sat atop pop music as recently as last year. Since he’s at the height of his career, the show can’t rely on its usual but-trouble-was-brewing ploy. Instead we get childhood debauchery, with Lil Wayne cheerfully recounting his initiations into sex and drugs at the age of 11, and more recent brushes with the law, none of which stopped him from having one of the best-selling albums of 2008 and winning four Grammy Awards.

“Behind the Music” traditionalists will have to look forward to the Sept. 24 episode and the sad but currently uplifting story of Bobby Brown.

This is “BtM” Classic: the teenage fame, the girls, the drugs, the group torn apart by warring egos, the heady days of (fill in the year) and the low point of (fill in the embarrassing drug-fueled incident). You can just see James Forbes, the show’s long-time narrator, perking up as he gets to read lines like “But backstage, Bobby and the boys were going wild, bringing their street habits onto the road.”

“Behind the Music” still works best in the past tense.

they should change the name of the show to "After the Music" because we are without a doubt in the post-music era if the best and most interesting stories to tell on Behind the Music are about Lil Wayne, T.I., 50 Cent and Brett Michaels.

errant said:

Or at least get people from the past that haven't had an episode YET!

they should rename it behind the crap cause these so called rappers r CRAP!

They couldn't think of better artist than fiddy, Little Wayne, ET, Pinky, Rock of Love and Bobby Brown.

LittleBLUECorvette said:

VH-Dumb.

Timmy84 said:

yes....but we will watch

perhaps their theme should be "how did these people ever become famous?"

japanrocks said:

Right.

Well damn, what is it that we don't already know about Bobbay !!!?

Hell, we've all ready witnessed "After the Train Wreck"... cough * cough, "Being Bobby Brown."

japanrocks said: