Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky, Mike, and Ralph had a dream. Before the Top 40 Hits, the gold records, the international stardom, the Boston boys just wanted to entertain the girls.

“It didn’t start out as a musical journey for us, it started as a journey for us to figure out how to make the young ladies scream and win talent shows and have a little bit of pocket change,” Ronnie DeVoe told the Boston Herald. “Now it’s turned into a legacy.”

Despite the members being teenagers when they burst on the scene in 1983, New Edition wasn’t an overnight success. DeVoe, Bobby Brown, Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, and Ralph Tresvant hustled, and hustled, and hustled some more to defy the odds.

“Starting in 1978 when the group was formed, at any point we could have given up before ‘Candy Girl’ came out in 1983,” DeVoe said. “But because we didn’t quit and rehearsed our craft, we were ready when the opportunity presented itself.”

DeVoe says it’s amazing to “fast forward 40 plus years in a business that will chew you up and spit you out after one record” and see where New Edition is today. And where is that exactly?

On Sunday, the five originals plus longtime member Johnny Gill return home to perform the TD Garden on the blockbuster The New Edition Way Tour featuring protégés Boyz II Men and R&B icon Toni Braxton. The name of the tour comes from a street in Roxbury that was renamed after the group last summer in celebration of its 42nd anniversary.

New Edition has done reunion tours in the past, but nothing like this. While the Boston boys are clearly the headliners, there is no opener per se. Instead, performers come on and off the stage all night.

“When you have a show of this magnitude and have the New Edition fans, the individual Boyz II Men fans, the individual Toni Braxton fans, and you tell them you’re going to do this intertwined show, something that’s never been done before, they’re all kind of apprehensive,” DeVoe said. “But they are leaving the arena feeling like it was everything they wanted it to be on the positive side and then some.”

With artists popping in and popping out, the hits don’t stop — in a few minutes, the night can bounce from Boyz II Men’s “Motownphilly” to Braxton’s “He Wasn’t Man Enough for Me” to New Edition’s “You’re Not My Kind of Girl.” Then there are the solo smashes.

One of the exceptional things about New Edition is every member has had success outside the group. And you can bet on hearing the best of the best including Tresvant’s “Sensitivity,” Brown’s “Every Little Step,” and Bell Biv DeVoe’s “Poison.”

DeVoe now lives in Atlanta but calls Boston home. When asked what he needs to do while he’s home, he quickly lists half a dozen foods, landmarks, friends, and family he loves to get reacquainted with. But he also notes that giving back, living up to New Edition Way, matters most.

“Speaking to kids at the Boys & Girls club, mentoring kids with (charity organization) 100 Black Men, those are the kinds of things I’m doing,” he said. “It’s no longer about coming into a city and hitting the hotel, hitting the venue, then getting back on the tour bus. It’s about what are the needs of the city and how do we meet some of those needs.”

It’s also still about making people scream — as anyone who goes to the Garden Sunday will find out.

For tickets and details, visit neweditionofficial.com