See Bell Biv DeVoe Bring ‘Poison’ to 2020 AMAs for Ultimate Throwback Performance

Nearly 30 years after Bell Biv Devoe first performed at the American Music Awards, the new jack swing legends returned to the AMAs to deliver a medley of their songs.

The trio of Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, and Ronnie DeVoe sang their two most enduring hits, “Do Me!” and “Poison,” at Los Angeles’ Microsoft Theater on Sunday. Bell Biv Devoe performed on a stage that looked straight out of MTV’s Nineties heyday, with school lockers and Lakers jerseys decorating the backdrop as they crooned through their iconic singles.

The three-time AMA-winning group last took the American Music Awards stage in 1991, where the trio performed “B.B.D. (I Thought It Was Me)?”

The trio said of their return to the AMAs: “It’s a living room moment during Thanksgiving…and I think the good thing is, the moms, the uncles, the dads, the older brothers and sisters, they get to reminisce on how they felt when they were in high school and college.”

BBD continued: “Thirty years of triumph. Thirty years of generational success. When you look at people that are 60 and 50 and all the way down to two- and three-year-olds singing our song and dancing and trying to do that breakdown, it’s just an amazing achievement for us.”


In 2017, Bell Biv DeVoe released their album Three Stripes, BBD’s first collection of new music since 2001.