What the Hell Ever Happened to… Soul For Real

New feature time!  Much like VH1’s Where Are They Now?, our own What the Hell Ever Happened to… will track down the celebrities of our youth, using what limited resources are available to us – mostly our devilish good looks, and Wikipedia.  The inspiration for this feature was the following music video, which prompted the question you see above:  What the hell ever happened to Soul For Real?  [So, apparently embedding has been disabled for every version of this video residing in the tubes.  It will have to suffice for you to link over to YouTube to watch.  Apologies, but seriously, go and watch.]

Soul For Real.  Man, what an awesome group.  I mean, when I was a kid, they were like Jackson 5 meets Boyz II Men.  I remember watching them lip sync Candy Rain on Nickelodeon’s All That when I was a kid.  (All That, coincidentally, may be the subject of a future What the Hell Ever Happened to….)  They could sing, they could dance, and they were the bomb.  I mean what 13-year-old didn’t want to be in a singing and dancing heartthrob group with his older brothers?  (Anybody?)

…and then nothing.  They had the one song that got them onto a tween-targeted sketch comedy show, but that was it.  I for one never heard anything from them again, outside of that song many, many times over the intervening years, thanks to the wonderful (seriously) All That:  the Album.  I mean, this was the group that kept the teenage-heartthrob-boy-group-who-sing-and-dance vibe going through the early 90s.  I won’t say they paved the way for Backstreet, Blackstreet, *NSYNC, and 112, but they definitely performed routine highway maintenance.  Find out what happened to this most important one-hit-wonder pop-soul boygroup of the mid-90s, after the jump.

So what ever happened to Soul For Real?  Not much, as it turns out.  They dropped four singles from their debut album, Candy Rain in 1995, two from their follow up effort, and one from their most recent disc in 1999.  I’d list the titles, but you’ve never heard of them either.  The group, composed of the four Dalyrimple brothers – that’s right, they’re all brothers… and their last name is really Dalyrimple, which is awesome – have been pretty quiet for a while, but all that’s about to change.  From their MySpace page:

we want to thank everyone who has supported us and have been looking out for us…just wanted to let you all know we ARE COMING BACK IN A MAJOR WAY… we have been working on the new album hard and will be posting the new songs here first….and believe we are coming with only the hottest for everyone…. We will be trying to reach everybody who writes us back as quickly as possible, but we WILL write back….. good look and see ya’ll soon. ALSO PLEASE CHECK OUT AND SUPPORT UNCLE DRE DAY EMBROIDERY PRODUCTIONS & JASEMAKERMUSIC… IF U WOULD LIKE TO BOOK US FOR A PAID SHOW OR TO HAVE US ON A SONG PLEASE CONTACT US AND SOME1 WILL GET BACK TO U IN REGARDS TO YOUR REQUEST TO SET SOMETHING UP. THANKS

You read right, boys & girls – Soul For Real is back for a new millennium.  Jason (the “Michael” of the group) is no longer 13, but he’s also not Jacko, so the guys have that going for them.  I’ll leave the verdict on their new music up to you (listen on their MySpace), but there it is.  First single is out now – apparently you can request it on radio and everything.  Also, you can book the group for a paid gig, like a birthday party.  Or a bar mitzvah.

Though I’m excited to see such an amazing, awesome, super-talented, not-at-all run-of-the-mill group still chugging along and making music, I’m a little disappointed that all that’s happened to them is… that they’re still chugging along and making music.  I don’t know what I was hoping for, but I was sure it would be something like an appearance on Big Brother or  Celebrity Rehab.  Actually, good on the Dalyrimples for staying away from that (even if it wasn’t by choice).

So that’s all for this episode… nothing too exciting, but that’s all-to-often the case.  Leave suggestions for future posts in the comments or email us at the email on the right side of the page.  Also whatever speculation you have for what happened to Soul For Real from 1999 to 2008.