Diary of a Mad Band is the second studio album from AmericanR&B group Jodeci, released December 21, 1993, on Uptown Records and distributed through MCA Records. The album also featured the first-ever album appearances from Timbaland & Magoo, S.B.I, Missy Elliott (credited as Misdemeanor) and Sista, two years before the latter group became known in the music industry. New Jersey rapper Redman also makes a guest appearance on the album. It was Jodeci's second album to reach number one on the R&B album chart, where it stayed for two weeks. It spawned the number 1 R&B hit "Cry for You"; the number 2 R&B hit "Feenin'", and the Top 15 R&B hit "What About Us". Despite not being released as a single, the album's opening track, "My Heart Belongs To U", was also an urban radio hit with it peaking at #55 & charting for 20 weeks on the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart. To date, the album has sold over four million copies in the United States and six million worldwide.
Dimitri Ehrlich of Entertainment Weekly wrote that at times bested the group's first, stating that the songs on their sophomore effort "often transcend the formulaic histrionics that marred their debut."[5]AllMusic critic Ron Wynn deemed the record "jarring" and "mismatched", preferring its sentimental love songs to the sexually explicit, hip hop-influenced "come-on numbers", which he found to be in poor taste.[1] Rohan B. Preston from the Chicago Tribune found the lyrics clichéd and Jodeci "certainly not as funky as H-Town nor as stirring as Boyz II Men at their best".[3]Robert Christgau was even less impressed and assigned it a "neither" symbol in his Consumer Guide book, indicating an album that "may impress once or twice with consistent craft or an arresting track or two. Then it won't."[4]
