BIO

Clad in jeans and a checkered shirt, Ron Isley is warming up at the mike at The Henry Fonda Theater in Los Angeles. It’s a few hours before showtime: Ron’s riffing and it’s one of those trademark vocal runs that have been seducing women and setting guys up for the seduction for decades of baby-makin’ music….

BABY MAKIN' MUSIC, , a natural title for a new album by The Isley Brothers featuring Ron Isley aka “Mr. Biggs” For, in the annals of contemporary music, few groups or artists can lay claim to creating as many slow jams and bedroom classics, classics that set the perfect right mood for romance leading to seduction, seduction leading to passion and, yes, in more than one instance, passion as a prelude to a rise in the birth rate! “Yes, we’ve been making baby-makin’ music for quite a while,” Ron grins with confidence, aware that his smooth-yet-soulful vocal style has brought pleasure to millions of music lovers for five decades now.

The Isleys’ catalog, filled with funky grooves like “It’s Your Thing,” “Fight The Power” and “Take Me To The Next Phase” is also rich with eternal love songs like “In Between The Sheets,” “For The Love Of You,” “Summer Breeze,” “Smooth Sailin’ Tonight,” “Voyage To Atlantis” and in more recent times, “Floatin’ On Your Love,” the 2001 pop/R&B smash “Contagious.” And for good measure, there’s Ron’s now-firmly established musical character “Mr. Biggs” offering “Down Low (Nobody Has To Know),” the 1996 hit collaboration with R. Kelly, showing another side of love, the lyrical subject matter for more than a few Isley standards…

Now comes BABY MAKIN’ MUSIC, the team’s first CD for Def Soul, following in the tradition of great Isley Brothers’ records, filled with new love odes, hit cuts and future classics. From the album’s first single, the inviting, instantly memorable “Just Came Here To Chill” - a tune Ron says “sounds like vintage Isley Brothers” - written and produced by Troy Taylor (known for his work with Mary J. Blige, Whitney Houston and Yolanda Adams among others) and Gordon Chambers (Grammy-award winning writer for Anita Baker and producer for Aretha Franklin, Brandy and others) to the insistent “Blast Off,” a new duet between “Mr. Biggs” and R. Kelly, completed just weeks before the album’s release, BABY MAKIN’ MUSIC continues the Isleys’ legacy without missing a beat.

The first Isleys Brothers’ album since 2003’s gold Body Kiss set and Ron’s own 2003 solo album, Isley Meets Bacharach (a critically-acclaimed masterful collaboration with the legendary producer, songwriter, arranger and conductor), BABY MAKIN’ MUSIC begins the group’s incredible sixth decade in the music industry. “It’s our sound with an updated twist, “ Ron comments. “We’re always looking at new ways of interpreting love songs. On this album, I was introduced to some producers and writers who wrote material especially for me. I’d never worked with (producer) Jermaine Dupri before and I was anxious to do that. He did three songs: the first one he played me I liked right away and that was “Gotta Be With You” which tells the story of a guy who’s been in the game for a while. Then he also did “Beautiful” and “Forever Mackin,’” which is perfect for “Mr. Biggs”!” The ‘tough’ image associated with ‘Biggs,’ Ron’s musical alter-ego is “just a part of me,” he smiles. “I got the name from the younger artists telling me, ‘hey, you’re the man!’ It’s not so much that I’m playing a gangster…more a musical ‘godfather’!”

BABY MAKIN’ MUSIC continues the unparalleled history of a group whose name has appeared on the charts for each of the last five decades, a feat achieved by no other family team in music history. The name “Isley” first graced the Top 50 in 1959 with “Shout,” four years after the group was formed in Cincinatti, Ohio. The original recording lineup included Ronald and older brothers O’Kelly and Rudolph (a fourth brother, Vernon, died in the ’50s).

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