By early 1991, the ever-shifting status of musical trends had begun to take its toll on the enormous popularity of the New Kids on the Block. Only two years before, the group had taken the U.S. (and the world) by storm with its seminal second release, Hangin' Tough. In June 1990, the album Step by Step would spawn the group's most successful single, the title track. After the final single from the album, "Let's Try It Again", failed to crack the top forty, a seeming backlash had become evident.
Sensing this, group member Donnie Wahlberg led the group in coordinating this remix album, which fused the "harder" elements of hip-hop and urban dance into the New Kids' sound, resulting in No More Games/The Remix Album—with a significant portion of the album remixed by Robert Clivilles and David Cole (ofC+C Music Factory fame). Also employed was a marketing tactic to release the album under the 'NKOTB' acronym. Since the youngest group member was now eighteen years old, and the rest were in their early twenties, they had arguably grown out of the New 'Kids' On The Block moniker that they rose to fame with. More significantly, it was an attempt to dissociate from the stigma that was attached to that name.
The album's first single, "Call It What You Want (The C&C Pump-It Mix)" is a house remix track, again produced by Clivilles/Cole, featuring an intro rap from Freedom Williams. The song was another that received decent (though not enthusiastic) airplay in North America during the spring months of 1991, and could be considered the "last hurrah" in terms of singles from the group's initial run. The single peaked at number 12 on the UK Singles Chart. The album opens up with "Games (The New Kids Get Hard Mix)", a track co-written by Donnie Wahlberg, that originally appeared on the Step by Step album. Employing hip-hop samples, jazz riffs sung by Jordan Knight, and defensive rhymes by Wahlberg, "Games" was a dramatic departure from their previously clean cut sound and was released as the album's second single. The song received decent airplay from stations nationwide, but was not a major hit on the charts. "Baby, I Believe in You" was released as a third single it peaked at number 91 on the ARIA Charts,[1] number 64 in Netherlands and number 20 in New Zealand.[2]
The album received favorable reviews from music critics. Rob Tannenbaum from Entertainment Weekly gave the album a B and wrote that the album's remixes "are changed as drastically as black-and-white films that have been colorized". He also claimed that even though "the remixers' talents are wasted on archaic ballads like "Please Don't Go Girl" and "Valentine Girl" the album "contemporary makeover goes a long way toward making the New Kids sound grown-up". Pedro B. from Sputnikmusic website gave the album three and a half stars out of five and wrote that even though the album "is not musically excellent" "it is a very well-conceived album, perfect for the audience it targeted, and conceptually perfect." AllMusic wrote no review for the album but gave to it two out of five stars.
Although No More Games/The Remix Album was certified gold in the US, the album did not restore the group's former success. Their popularity had waned by the time of the album's release, as the pre-teens who had liked them at their peak were the same audience who would become part of "Generation X", embracing the forthcoming grunge and gangsta rap sounds that ended the dominance of late 80s/early 90s dance/pop.[5]
^Pennanen, Timo (2006). Sisältää hitin - levyt ja esittäjät Suomen musiikkilistoilla vuodesta 1972 (in Finnish) (1st ed.). Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. p. 263. ISBN978-951-1-21053-5.
