Cynics tend to dismiss remix albums as cheap exploitation and opportunism on the part of labels. But when the remixing is handled by inventive DJs, they definitely have their pleasures…

Don't Be Cruel was to Bobby Brown what Control was to Janet Jackson – a tougher, more aggressive project that shed his "bubblegum" image altogether and brought him to a new artistic and commercial plateau…

Bobby Brown's style was still fairly close to that of his comrades in New Edition when he recorded his first solo effort, King of Stage – an album giving little indication of the hard-edged, aggressive "new jack swing" that was only two years away on Don't Be Cruel…