Ginuwine, R.L., Tyrese & Case: 27 years of “The Best Man I Can Be”
Four of the era's leading men, one Jam & Lewis ballad, and the soundtrack moment that still owns wedding season — 27 years on.
Every R&B fan has a version of this memory. A reception hall, a groom in a rented tux, the lights dropping low, and then four men taking turns at the mic. "The Best Man I Can Be" was built for that room. Released as a single on October 29, 1999 — 27 years ago this week — it put Ginuwine, R.L. of Next, Tyrese and Case on one six-and-a-half-minute ballad and asked each of them to make a vow.
The setting was The Best Man, the directing debut of Malcolm D. Lee, produced by his cousin Spike Lee's 40 Acres and a Mule and released by Universal on October 22, 1999. Taye Diggs, Nia Long, Morris Chestnut, Harold Perrineau, Terrence Howard, Sanaa Lathan, Monica Calhoun and Melissa De Sousa led the ensemble, and Regina Hall made her screen debut. Made for $9 million, the film grossed $34.5 million and won Outstanding Motion Picture at the NAACP Image Awards.
- Single released
- Oct 29, 1999
- Producers
- Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis · co-producer Big Jim Wright
- Length
- 6:31
- Hot 100
- #77
- Hot R&B/Hip-Hop
- #20
- Adult R&B
- #5
Four leading men, one room
Look at where each of them stood that year. Ginuwine's second album, 100% Ginuwine, arrived in March 1999 and debuted at #5 on the Billboard 200. Case's Personal Conversation followed in April, carrying "Happily Ever After" to #15 on the Hot 100 and #3 on the R&B chart. Tyrese was a year into his self-titled RCA debut and its run of "Nobody Else," "Sweet Lady" and "Lately." And R.L. was the lead voice of Next, whose "Too Close" had spent five weeks at #1 on the Hot 100 in 1998.
Four stars on one song could have turned into a contest. Instead, the credits read like a group chat. Robert "R.L." Huggar, Tyrese Gibson, Case Woodard and Elgin Lumpkin — Ginuwine's given name — share the writing with R.L.'s Next bandmates Terry and Raphael Brown, plus Terry Lewis and Big Jim Wright. Everybody had a pen in it, so everybody had a stake in it.
The Jam & Lewis touch
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis produced it, five years after they gave Boyz II Men "On Bended Knee." Big Jim Wright co-produced and sang additional background vocals. The record takes its time. At 6:31 it's long by radio standards, and that's the point: four verses, four temperaments, four men promising to be better than they have been.
“It's not a duet and it's not a group record. It's four solo stars agreeing, for six and a half minutes, to share one spotlight.”
— FIFI, Editor-in-Chief
Bigger than its chart peak
On paper, the single's numbers were modest for a lineup this stacked: #77 on the Hot 100, #20 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, #5 on Adult R&B and #61 on Billboard's 2000 year-end R&B chart. The soundtrack did the heavy lifting. The Best Man: Music from the Motion Picture, released on Columbia on October 12, 1999, reached #2 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and #16 on the Billboard 200, and went platinum. Its tracklist plays like a late-'90s mixtape: Maxwell's "Let's Not Play the Game," Beyoncé and Marc Nelson's "After All Is Said and Done," Faith Evans, Kenny Lattimore, Eric Benét, Allure and The Roots, with the four-man ballad closing the album.
A chart from 1999 couldn't count where this song really lives: receptions, anniversaries, vow renewals and Sunday-night quiet storm sets. The story on screen kept going too. The Best Man Holiday reunited the cast in 2013, and Peacock's The Best Man: The Final Chapters followed in December 2022.
Twenty-seven years later, the song still keeps the promise in its title. It doesn't claim to be perfect. It promises to try. That's why it keeps getting played at the moments that matter.
