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HB: What do you think about the boy bands that are out now?

(Billy) It is limited. There’s not a lot of groups now who can stay together or they’re just not doing it how groups did it in the 90s and early 2000s. I think that the music industry has created that. It’s driven by how much money you can make and not the artistic part of what music is. In the 90s and early 2000s, it was all about the artistry. At this point, it’s kind of lost. Most of the groups you hear from now are groups that previously put records out, groups like us, Jagged Edge is coming out with a new record and NEXT is back on tour. But, the groups that you hear are the older groups and there’s no new R&B groups that are coming out. It’s kind of scary. Music was putting out timeless records like Jodeci’s Feenin’ and stuff we can hear all day. Nowadays, there doing music that has no feeling. It’s just there. It’s just stagnant.

HB: What has changed since you guys have been out?

Hi-Five: (Billy) Social media was not around in the 90s. It was hard, you had to go out there and hustle and bustle to sell a record. You didn’t have other outlets out there like YouTube and Spotify. Computers were just coming in to the social media aspect. We had big cell phones that were the size of a book. Nowadays, they’re the size of your hand, if that. I just think that, for me, it was just the social media aspect back then wasn’t there as it is now. The way people go and sell records in doing business is totally different from back then.

HB: Are you guys teaming back up with Teddy Riley?

Hi-Five: (Billy) Teddy’s cool, but we’re not currently working with him in this situation. Not to say that if he said, “guys, we need to do this record,” we wouldn’t do it. But, as of right now, we’re not working with Teddy. We have some in-house producers and us writing. Things that we weren’t doing before because we were young and we were rolling with what the labels were saying. Now, it’s totally different and we all have something to bring to the table to make it work. We’re coming up with the right sound without taking away from the hi-five sound.

(Treston) There are a lot of groups that come back and want to get into the right now without coming out and gradually getting in with the right now. They take the wrong approach in trying to come out with a new project. You have to reconnect with who you were and how you got there. That’s the feel we have with “It’s Nothing,” it’s still 2014, but it’s a live feel. The lyrical content is now, but it still gives you a feel like music did back in the 90s. From there, we’ll grow new fans. We’re gonna get new fans, but we have to take care of those who made hi-five happen in the first place.

Watch a clip from their “Unsung” episode that airs on TV One tonight at 8pm, below:

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