What’s Going On Is Success : Detroit’s U.N.V. Is First Hit for Madonna’s New Label

Being from Detroit used to be the best thing possible for a soul group. That’s where Motown started, and many of its top acts were based there.

Not anymore. For the group U.N.V., whose debut album and single--both titled “Something’s Going On”--are zooming up the charts, Detroit proved to be a lonely place.

“We could have quit a lot of times, because you get so incredibly frustrated waiting to get a deal from a major record company,” says group member John Rowe. “We felt real isolated because we’re from Detroit, which doesn’t count for much in the record business anymore.”

But then along came another Michigan native by the name of Madonna. U.N.V. is the latest act on Ms. Ciccone’s fledgling Maverick label, and the company’s first hit.

It was certainly the group’s vocals and songs that impressed her and her staff. U.N.V. ranks not too far behind leader Boyz II Men in the silky soul hierarchy, offering remarkably smooth harmonies, sounding like the O’Jays did 20 years ago. Rowe, his brother Shawn, Demetrius Peete and John (J.C) Clay--all in their 20s--share the lead-singing duties, and there’s not a weak vocalist among them.

But Madonna might have been just as impressed by the group’s confidence.

Success, Rowe says in the lounge of a West Hollywood hotel during a recent brief visit, is “no real surprise--we knew the single and the album were real good.

“I don’t mean to brag, but we can sing anything . But it’s OK to brag a little because we didn’t stumble into this by accident. We’ve worked very hard for years, getting those harmonies just right, perfecting those songs.”

That was enough to get the group attention around Detroit, enough to convince the Maverick executives of the its potential.

“They were off to a good start because they had a single that was on the radio and selling in their town,” says Maverick vice president Abbey Konowitch. “We liked their singing, of course, but we really liked the songs they had written.”

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U.N.V., which stands for Universal Nubian Voices, started one summer several years ago with the impromptu musical sessions of Rowe and Peete--a Cleveland native and the only U.N.V. member not from Michigan. College buddies at Ohio’s Wilberforce University, they decided to form a group, eventually recruiting Shawn Rowe and Clay, an alumnus of the Manhattan School of Music.

“The R&B; vocal group craze was just starting and we felt we could fit in somewhere,” recalls John Rowe, an upbeat fast talker who’d make a good salesman. “I’ll admit we were rough in the beginning while we were learning. We were close to being good, but not quite there. We were impatient. We kept getting closer but not fast enough to suit us.”

Songwriting, though, was nearly the group’s downfall. “We had been looking for a major record deal for a long time but the lack of good songs was holding us back,” Rowe recalls. “But we weren’t singing our songs at first. When we started to record our songs--that’s when we got a record deal.”

With a hit record under its belt, U.N.V. has its sights set on a loftier goal to renew its hometown’s legacy as a musical capital.

“We want to bring Detroit back to the musical level it reached back in the ‘60s, when Motown was at its peak,” Rowe says. “We want to write and produce records. We could be junior Berry Gordys.”