Be Be Winans – Brand New Dance

In his two decades in the Gospel recording community, BeBe Winans has certainly made a name for himself with Gospel audiences, but his popular appeal pales in comparison to his status among other artists in the Gospel and Urban Adult Contemporary arena. A member of the legendary Winans family, he has built a multi-faceted career that continues to gain for him new audiences, both within and outside the world of Gospel music. Born Benjamin Winans, BeBe spent his early twenties singing background for his more famous siblings, The Winans vocal group. Then he and sister CeCe formed their own duo in the mid-80s and surprisingly landed joint contracts with Sparrow and Capitol Records (for Gospel and secular markets) for their self-titled debut in 1986. Working with producer Keith Thomas, the duo matched an unusually sophisticated, slick soul sound to Gospel lyrics and began building an audience among Gospel, soul and adult contemporary listeners. If their older siblings, The Winans, brought the sound of the Temptations to Gospel, BeBe and CeCe brought the sound of Marvin and Tammi. Their debut was as good as anything on urban adult contemporary radio that year, and garnered some well deserved success, especially with the very nice midtempo hit, “IOU Me.” While their debut showed promise, real success came with their second disc, Heaven, the title track of which became a top ten smash and elevated BeBe and CeCe to stardom with Gospel and Contemporary Christian Music fans. And …