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Poison (Bell Biv DeVoe song)

1990 single by Bell Biv DeVoe

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 24, 2025
Entity authorityQ7208434 ↗
Source-derived summary

"Poison" is the debut single of American vocal group Bell Biv DeVoe, released as the first single from their debut album of the same name. The song, in the style of new jack swing, a late-1980s/early-1990s hybrid of R&B, hip hop and swing, was the group's most successful.

Background and information

The song was written and produced by Elliot Straite (Dr. Freeze). Straite had originally planned to feature the song on his own album, but plans changed when the members of Bell Biv DeVoe heard his demo version. "When the guys heard it, they went nuts. I didn't think that record was going to be that big because it was a personal love letter to my ex-girlfriend at the time. It wasn't a song at first. It was a letter. When I wrote it as a song, I let a lot of my friends hear it, and they said it was weird.

Editorial summary

“Poison (Bell Biv DeVoe song)” enters the record as 1990 single by Bell Biv DeVoe. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Poison, Bell and DeVoe can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current 152-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1990-02-24. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Poison, Bell and DeVoe.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Poison (Bell Biv DeVoe song)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Poison, Bell and DeVoe provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 24, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7208434. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Poison (Bell Biv DeVoe song)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.