Boyz II Men were a well-known and well-established boy band in 1995, having already won a few Grammy Awards. However, after speaking with Michael Jackson, he wanted to make sure the quartet was never exploited.
“Know your worth’ was the best advice that we've ever gotten, and it was from Michael Jackson,” Wanya Morris, band member, told People magazine exclusively.
After the group provided backup vocals for Jackson's song HIStory,which can be found on HIStory: Past, Present, and Future, Book I, they had a conversation with King of Pop.
Jackson and Boyz, which at the time included Wanya, Nathan Morris, Shawn Stockman, and Michael McCary, "literally talked for hours" while seated in a back room, Wanya remembered.
“After we did our part, we went to this back room where Mike was set up and he had a board — like a visual vision board,” the Boyz II Men tenor, now 50, recalled.
“He was like, ‘Listen, this industry is crazy and they'll use you. They'll run you up and down, up and down the road and you won't even be able to understand what's happening until you sit back later and are able to look at it and see the benefits of the fruits of your labour. And that's when you want to realize that you've done the right thing. But the only way to do that is to know your worth and to never take less than what you feel your worth is.’ And that was it.”
Since then, the group has been increasingly prominent in popular culture, influencing a wide range of musical acts, being honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, doing numerous residency performances in Las Vegas, and even losing one member, McCary, to departure in 2003.
The group will return to Las Vegas in August, this time for four shows at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.