(Photo credit: Instagram)
The voice.
The moves.
The look.
The unibrow.
Whenever you mention Al B. Sure, all those images come flooding back. Even after over 30 years in the music business, Al still has it.
Albert Joseph Brown, III was born in Boston, Massachusetts on June 4, 1968 but raised in Mount Vernon, New York where he was the star quarterback on the high school football team. Still, he turned down a full scholarship to the University of Iowa to pursue his love of music under the alias Al B. Sure! In 1987, he was tapped by Quincy Jones as the winner of a Sony Records talent search and, found fame while still in his teens with the spectacular debut album “In Effect Mode” featuring numerous hits, including such instant R&B classics as Rescue Me and Nite and Day.
Known for the velvety-falsetto on his romantic love songs, Al released other solo CDs while collaborating on duets with everyone from Diana Ross to David Bowie to Al Green over the course of a recording and producing career which has garnered the R&B heartthrob numerous Grammy nominations as well as Soul Train and American Music Awards.
Over the years, people have come accostumed to a bigger Al B. Sure. But as of late, after he turned 50, he has shown that he not only has the staying power to be healthy too.
Back in 2019, he revealed that he lost 70 pounds and he’s been able to keep it off.
“I’m a human being just like you are. And I hurt and love just like everybody else, and people tend to forget that.”
That statement rang true when Sure’s son, Quincy, went public about his estranged relationship with his father. The son posted an open letter that detailed his love for his adoptive father, Sean “Diddy” Combs (Combs and Al both have children by the same woman, Kim Porter). In that same letter, he expressed his frustration and his unsure feelings about his biological father, wondering where Al was while he was growing up.
(Photo credit: Instagram)
But since then, the two have made up and even started working together. They, along with Diddy, mourned the loss of their children’s mother when she died unexpectedly at age 48.
Nearly 35 years after Al B. Sure’s “Nite and Day” hit No. 1 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, the track is back courtesy of the collaboration between Quincy and his dad.
(From L-R: Kim Porter, Al B. Sure’s son Qunincy, Al B. Sure / Photo Credit: Instagram)
“I didn’t want to devalue the beauty that is, was, and always will be in (the original),” Quincy tells Billboard. “I’m not trying to present this as the new ‘Nite and Day.’”
Quincy’s version, titled “I Can Tell You (Night & Day 2.0),” appears on Quincy’s new album, “This Is For You,” which was released on Valentine’s Day. Sure’s original spent three weeks atop the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart…
… in April and May of 1988.
“Me and my dad, our communication level started to increase,” says Quincy, referring to his previous estrangement with Sure, and their eventual reconciliation. “I kind of surprised him with [the remake]. I didn’t talk to him about it like ‘This is what I wanna do.’ I just wanted to put my all into it and almost surprised him with it — like ‘Hey, let’s hang out. Let’s go in the studio, I want you to hear some stuff.’”
Al now hosts a syndicated radio show, The Secret Garden, where he plays slow jams for his loyal listeners.
“I’m trying to bring the romance back to music. Old school…,” says Sure. “Music is meant to be a part of your blood stream, and if it doesn’t affect your bloodstream, then you may as well put it back in the shoebox underneath the bed. My godfather, Quincy Jones, taught me that the melody comes from God, and it is what it is. At the end of the day, what you put into something is what you get out of it.”
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