Wanya Morris was making the case for country music years before anyone handed Boyz II Men a Nashville contract. After the group taped a CMT Crossroads episode with Brett Young at the Grand Ole Opry House in 2019, he pointed to one of their own ballads. "Who's to say 'Water Runs Dry' couldn't be a country record? When Brett sings it, it sure sounds country to me," he told CMT at the time.

On Monday (Oct 26), the trio put that argument on paper. Nathan Morris, Wanya Morris and Shawn Stockman have signed with Warner Records Nashville, which will release the group's first country album in 2027. The project is untitled, and the Nashville songwriters they wrote it with have not been named. It will be their first studio album since Under the Streetlight, the 2017 collection of '50s and '60s covers, and their first set of original material since Collide in 2014.

The signing lands a month after the group's last trip into Nashville harmony. On "I Love The One," released Sept. 25, the three of them split a six-voice arrangement with Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood of Lady A. It is a song Scott co-wrote after The Chosen sent her back to a Gospel story about a woman healed by touching the hem of a garment. That single came out through 5&2 Studios and Capitol Christian Music Group as the third from Songs Inspired by The Chosen: Seasons 1-5, which arrives Friday (Oct 30). It sits on a different label and outside the new Warner deal.

Wanya Morris was precise about what the contract does and does not mean for the group's identity. "We don't want to become country. We want to be a part of it," he told The Tennessean, which broke the news alongside USA Today. He framed the overlap as something the group has felt for a long time. "The correlation between Boyz II Men and country music: I guess you could say that there's no real separation," he said.

Stockman described the pull in terms of craft rather than market. "We've always been enamored with the storytelling component of country music and how they actually put those stories to melody," he told the paper. He named Travis Tritt, Vince Gill and The Chicks among the acts the members grew up hearing. He credited the city's writing rooms with making the move feel natural. "Fortunately, some of the best writers are in the business of country. This was the beautiful thing of coming here to Nashville because it's somewhat of an oasis," he told Rolling Stone.

Cris Lacy, chair and president of Warner Records Nashville, said the signing came together around a detail from the members' childhoods. "Boyz II Men's global influence is decades in the making. Every genre and culture has benefited from their original music, and their impact on artists in the current country landscape, while perhaps surprising to some, is quite profound," Lacy said in the label's announcement. "When I learned that growing up listening to artists like Randy Travis was seminal in their desire to collaborate with Nashville's award-winning singers and songwriters, I knew we had to be a part of it."

Lacy closed the statement by pointing at the era that made the group, when radio and video put R&B, pop and country in front of the same kids. "They were pioneers at a time when media brought fans access to all types of music," she said. "History repeats itself, and it's the perfect time for Boyz II Men and those they inspired to make some magic together!"

The group's Nashville record runs back nearly a decade. On Oct. 8, 2018, they sang at the Opry's tribute to Ray Charles, a night hosted by Darius Rucker and filmed as a PBS special. They performed "Georgia on My Mind" and joined Chris Young on "Your Love So Doggone Good." The Brett Young episode of CMT Crossroads followed in 2019. That June, the two acts reunited at the CMT Music Awards with Young's "Here Tonight," folding in a section of "Water Runs Dry."

In that same CMT interview, Young explained what the trio meant to a country singer who learned to write songs with their records playing. "Boyz II Men was so present and prevalent in my life when I started writing songs," he said. "Every once in a while, when you guys sing your solos I can tell who's who, but when you're singing together, it's like who's doing what right now? It pushed me as a singer before I even knew it was doing that." The two acts returned for a holiday Crossroads special in December 2021, trading verses on "This Christmas."

This year the country bookings came faster. On March 3, the trio joined Young as surprise guests at the Listening Room's 20th anniversary show at the Ryman Auditorium. They sang "Water Runs Dry" on the stage where Hank Williams once worked the Opry. On April 24, Cody Johnson brought them out during his headlining set at Stagecoach in Indio, California, for "On Bended Knee." That 1994 ballad replaced their own "I'll Make Love to You" at No. 1 on the Hot 100. On July 4, at Nashville's Let Freedom Sing! celebration, they sang John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" before turning the crowd loose on "Motownphilly."

The Ray Charles night is the entry on that list that reads most like a forecast. In 1962, Charles released Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music on ABC-Paramount, and decades later the Opry built a Black History Month video around that album with Stockman among the voices on camera. "It's what I believe Ray envisioned for himself," Stockman said in the clip.

Chris Young, appearing in the same tribute, described the gamble in terms that now fit the trio's own contract. "I think there's very few people that have done anything as ambitious and as 'betting on themselves' as Ray Charles going 'Ok, new record deal, but I'm going to make the first record a country record,'" he said. Boyz II Men's first record for Warner Records Nashville will be a country record.

The group carries real weight into the room. Boyz II Men have sold more than 60 million albums worldwide, by the label's count, and won four Grammy Awards. Their 1995 Mariah Carey duet "One Sweet Day" held No. 1 on the Hot 100 for 16 weeks. Young's account suggests that catalog has been working inside country songwriting for a generation, through vocal stacks and slow-burning ballads that Nashville writers absorbed as teenagers.

Plenty about the album remains unannounced. Warner has given no title, no release date, no tracklist and no names for the songwriters in the room, and the label has not said whether any guest vocalists will appear. Nathan Morris described the project to The Tennessean as the group's first full venture into the genre, though hardly its first contact with it. Their calendar has put them on country stages three times since March.

Until Warner sets a date, the newest Boyz II Men recording in circulation is the one they cut with Lady A, and the album that carries it reaches stores and streaming services on Friday. Season 6 of The Chosen follows on Prime Video with a two-part premiere on Nov. 15.