Boyz II Men Recall the ‘Best Advice’ the Group Ever Got (Exclusive)

When the King of Pop speaks, you listen. 

Back in 1995, Boyz II Men already had a couple of Grammys under their belt, and they were a very established and popular group. But they then chatted with Michael Jackson, who wanted to make sure the quartet never got taken advantage of. 

“‘Know your worth’ was the best advice that we’ve ever gotten, and it was from Michael Jackson,” Wanya Morris told PEOPLE exclusively. 

The conversation with Jackson came after the group sang background vocals on his song “HIStory,” which appears on HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I. Sitting in a back room, Jackson and Boyz — consisting at the time of Wanya, Nathan Morris, Shawn Stockman and Michael McCary — “literally talked for hours,” Wanya recalled. 

“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 labor. 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.”

Despite the fact that group had been featured on Jackson’s track, which came after singing “One Sweet Day” with Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men had been working so hard that they didn’t notice how much their famed had catapulted. In fact, they didn’t realize they’d “made it” in the music business until they performed at the closing ceremony at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. 

“The record label had us working, so we didn’t really get the chance to sit down and see what was happening around us. We didn’t know to what extent the success was,” Wanya said. “I mean, of course people were screaming for us and things like that, but in the midst of working, those things take the backseat… So we didn’t really get a chance to really watch and see the success to the point where we said we made it.”

Singing at the Olympics, he continued, “was the moment where I looked at the audience, I looked at that stadium and I looked at the performance, and that’s when I said to myself, ‘Wow, we actually made an impact’. So it’s not even so much made it, it was that we made an impact.”

Since then, the group has cemented itself in pop culture has influenced an abundance of music acts, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, had multiple Las Vegas residency shows and even shed one member, McCary, who left in 2003. In August, the trio will descend on Vegas again, this time for a four-show performance at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. 

Speaking specifically about the upcoming Vegas shows, Morris said, “We know the type of audience that we have and we know that if we give the music integrity in the way that Boyz II Men normally does than we’ll have them in the palm of our hands.”

Las Vegas concert dates: Aug. 23, 24, 30 and 31, 2024. All dates will feature Robin Thicke. Tickets go on sale Saturday, April 20 at 10 a.m. PT at www.ticketmaster.com, cosmopolitanlasvegas.com or by calling 1-800-745-3000.