Retro Video of the Week: "It's No Crime" by Babyface

This past Sunday was the 35th anniversary of the release of Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds's second studio album, Tender Lover.  Like his debut album, 1986's Lovers, Tender Lover was co-produced by LA Reid, with uncredited production help from Babyface's childhood friend Daryl Simmons.  Some combination of those three, as well as Perri Reid -- better known as Pebbles, who had a successful music career in her own right -- wrote all the songs for the album.

Tender Lovers ended up being one of the most successful R&B albums released in 1989.  It reached #14 on the Billboard album chart and #1 on the Billboard R&B album chart, and its success carried through into the next year, as it was the #21 album on the Billboard Year End album chart for 1990 and the #2 album on the Billboard Year End R&B album chart for 1990.  Eventually, it went triple platinum in the U.S.

The album featured four Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, including two Top 10 songs:  "It's No Crime" (#7), the title track (#14), "My Kinda Girl" (#30), and "Whip Appeal" (#6).  Those songs all reached the Top 3 of the Billboard R&B singles chart, hitting #1, #1, #3, and #2, respectively.

Reid and Babyface would also form LaFace Records in 1989, and they and Simmons would continue to write and produce music together for the decades that followed, mostly for other artists, like Boyz II Men, Whitney Houston, TLC, Toni Braxton, Pink, Bobby Brown, Bell Biv DeVoe, Dru Hill, and Tevin Campbell, among many others.

For this week's Retro Video of the Week, I'm going with the first single off of Tender Lovers, "It's No Crime," a shining example of the new jack swing genre that was all the rage back then.  Now get out there and get your free Slurpee before the day is over.