Status: Single
City: BROOKLYN - PLANET 12
Country: US
Signup Date: 4/13/2006
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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
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Current mood:  amused
Category: Music
The BET Awards is the swine flu of Awards Ceremonies! I know I am very hard on REGGINS (If you don’t know what a Reggin is, spell if backwards), but there is a war going on outside between intelligent, educated, driven Black Americans. BET is a Reggin’s greatest weapon in their war on intelligence. The only reason that I watched this BET Crap is because of the tribute to Michael which is all Buffoon Entertainment Television has been bragging on since Michael went into a coma! So needless to say BET struck a mighty blow for COONERY! So in order to try and fire back, I proudly present the Top 10 Reasons the BET awards made me want to vomit
10. The muth@$#% sound man
How in the world do you leave a night dedicated to (arguably) the greatest musician of the past 40 years up to someone who obviously took a correspondence course and got a D- in turning up microphone volume. Some of these performances sounded incredible to my imagination because I had to strain to hear them.
9. T-Pain
I don’t even know where to begin. This reincarnation of Stepin Fetchit not only embarassed all of us by that Waste of precious metal he calls his “BIG ASS CHAIN”. Yes I know it’s his money, but there’s a time and a place for everything, and (I know it was BET) this wasn’t it. He had a great looking Michael shirt on that no one could see because it was eclipsed by his coon medallion. Then, to add insult to injury, when accepting an award, this Buffoon decided to drink out of a plastic red cup. REALLY?!? How classless
8. Zoe Saldana
Why in the world would you go out to present an award with the legendary Nichelle Nichols (The Original Uhura) from Star Trek and embarass the very legend who paved for you by telling the WORLD that Nichelle is in the restroom? That was so classless and unladylike. Yes Zoe, you can STILL GET IT, but you need some etiquette lessons.
7. Soulja Boy
No I didn’t expect him to pay tribute to Michael Jackson, nor did I expect him to be able to SPELL Michael Jackson, but the performance was lackluster at best. No unlike the Reggins, the use of pyro didn’t distract me from how much you sucked.
6. Tiny and Toya
This is why I stopped watching Bamboozled Entertainment Television in the first place. All you have to do to be a success is let a a rapper get you pregnant and you get a reality show? Way to go BET! This is going to set us back 350 years
5. Frankie and Neffie
See Number 6, except for the fact that instead of having a baby by a rapper, One is the crack addicted mother of a lackluster (although good-looking-in-a-hoodrat-..sort-of-way) R&B singer and the other is a sister who is the black version of Khloe Kardashian – sort of looks like the chick you wanna bang but she got the shallow end of the gene pool! Horrible!
4.The Censors
These idiots couldn’t bleep their way out of a wet paper bag! I counted 2 shits and they beeped out hoe? Smdh
3. Debra Lee
The New head of BET is such a pioneer! No one thought that BET could sink any lower than Bob Johnson’s level of coonery and u proved us all wrong! Moron! I bet you think you’ve done something substantial, but you have only managed to embarass us on an international stage due to the fact that CNN has been covering this abomination!
2.The pay it off show! Another attempt to bamboozle Black people. Whatever you do in BET programming, Don’t encourage or empower black folks to get out of debt, just have a game show and give false hope to millions! Way to go!
1. Tiny again! You tarnished ti’s viewers choice awards by accepting it in his honor with ur broken english and off the rack house of dereon dress. Again I encourage you to see reason #6
SUPER #1's Drake’s performance of Every Girl in the world – This was okay until they brought those little girls onstage! How Canadian and pedophile-like of you. We tolerated that nonsense with R. Kelly and he’s a musical genius. You’re a flash-in-the-pan for now. While you’re at it, I know these coons don’t expect much of a performance but you could have at least gotten out of your seat. Especially since you’ve been playing a kid in a wheelchair for years.
Joe Jackson During the preshow, you were an opportunist, plugging a new record label and YOUR CHILD’S BODY ISN’T IN THE GROUND YET! You sir disgust me more than the collective casts of all 800 seasons of College Hill. You should be ashamed!
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Friday, June 26, 2009
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Current mood:  sad
Greetings Earthlings I'm back in the mix with my honor series & because of the untimely death of the King Of Pop, there's no need for a fancy intro so it can only be summed up in two words: The Jacksons !!! Jackie Jackson - first tenor /sweet falsetto Tito Jackson - guitar and bass-bottom vocals Jermaine Jackson - bass, co-lead singer, baritone/2nd tenor Marlon Jackson - raspy 2nd tenor/chief choreographer Randy Jackson - keyboards, Congas/2nd tenor/baritone Michael Jackson - Nuff said....you can fill in the blanks (lol) From the precision dance steps to the classic songs to the tight harmonies, There are absolutely no words to describe the influence and impact of the most talented family in music history. They are without a doubt the ultimate blueprint for the boy bands and family groups that dominated the 80's, 90's and early 2000's. Their innovations in recording, dancing and even film has changed the game on so many levels. Growing up, my uncle made sure that I knew every lead and every harmony part of each brother and then assembled me and my cousins into the group for house parties. And of course, you can guess who was Michael (wink). Whenever they performed on TV, the whole family would gather in the living room and watch to see what kind of hot performance the brothers would put on. The Jacksons were a working-class family from Gary, Indiana. Katherine, being a Jehovah's Witness, raised the children as such, while their father, Joe, who started studying with the Witnesses, instead decided he would not join that faith. Their father, a steel mill employee who often performed in an R&B band called "The Falcons" with his brother Luther, was a strict disciplinarian. Many of the Jackson children recall being spanked or whipped by Joe for misbehaving. Let me say that like all parents, Joseph was not perfect in a lot of areas but the bottom line is that if it wasn't for him, The Jacksons would have never happened and because my family is from the south too, I understood that it's not easy raising 9 kids with different personalities on a Steel Mill salary so things had to be done a certain way. The children found an outlet in doing jumping jacks, with elder brothers Jackie (born Sigmund Esco Jackson, 1951), Tito (born Toriano Adaryll Jackson, 1953), and Jermaine Lajuan (b. 1954) borrowing their father's guitar without his permission and playing along to the radio. Younger brothers Marlon David (b. 1957) and Michael Joseph (b. 1958) were allowed to watch as long as they did not tell. Joseph eventually discovered that the older three boys were playing his guitar when Tito broke one of the strings. Although he was furious at first and punished Tito, Joseph realized the boys had talent and began making plans to create a musical act for them. Katherine was outraged when Joseph took money he made and decided to invest his son's future by buying instruments when he should've brought new shoes for Jackie (lol). In 1963, Jackie, Tito, and Jermaine began performing around the Gary area with neighborhood children Milford Hite (on drums) and Reynaud Jones (on keyboards), in a group called The Jackson Brothers. Joe Jackson served as the manager, at first only part-time, and then eventually quitting his job at the steel mill. Jermaine sang lead and played bass, and Tito played guitar. In 1964, younger brothers Marlon and Michael joined the group. Already showing strong natural talent as a singer and dancer, Michael was asked by his older brother Jermaine to be the lead vocalist by mid-1967. Shirley Cartman, Tito's junior high orchestra teacher, noticed the group's talents and served as an early mentor to the group, by then they called themselves The Jackson Five a name given to them by a lady in their neighborhood. During this period, the boys toured Indiana extensively, and after winning a major local talent show in 1966 with a rendition of The Temptations' "My Girl", led by Michael, they began playing professional gigs in Chicago, Illinois and across the mid-eastern U.S. Many of these gigs were in a string of black clubs and venues collectively known as the "chitlin' circuit", and the young kids sometimes had to open for strip teasers and other adult acts in order to earn money. Shirley Cartman got the Jackson Five a record deal with Gordon Keith's local Steeltown label, and the group began making their first recordings in 1967. Their first single, "Big Boy", became a regional hit. During this period, Johnny Jackson (no relation) on drums and Ronnie Rancifer on keys replaced the other two members. The Jackson Five had a number of admirers in their early days, including Sam & Dave, who helped the group secure a spot in the famous Amateur Night competition at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. The group won the August 13, 1967 competition during the Amateur Night showdown at the Apollo, impressing Motown Records artist Gladys Knight of The Pips. Knight recommended the group to Motown chief Berry Gordy, but Gordy, who already had teenager Stevie Wonder on his roster, was hesitant to take on another child act because of the child labor laws and other problems involved that he had went through with Stevie and his parents. The Jackson Five's sound was influenced by many of the biggest stars of the 1960s, especially including family funk bands Sly & the Family Stone and The Isley Brothers, soul pioneer Marvin Gaye, Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, and soul shouters like Wilson Pickett, Jackie Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Joe Tex and James Brown. At the time of their early success, soul and funk stars, especially coming from Motown Records, were among the most popular musicians; Motown had launched the careers of dozens of the decade's biggest stars, most notably Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, and Diana Ross & the Supremes. From these sources, The Jackson Five developed many of their vocal arrangement styles and dance movements. The group's multi-split-lead vocal style was inspired by that of The Family Stone, while young Michael adapted Jackie Wilson and James Brown's impassioned singing and dancing styles into his own. Marlon was also a noted dance terror in his own right and Michael credits Marlon in his autobiography as the chief choreographer of a lot of the group's signature dance routines including the all-too-famous "Jackson Point" dance and is also a verrrry huge dance influence on the L*A*W. Let me also point out that though most of the leads went to Michael and Jermaine, all the brothers were definitely allowed to show off their vocal talents and if you are a die-hard Jackson 5 album fan like myself, you will hear many of the album cuts that features Jackie, Tito & Marlon making some strong vocal appearances like "Corner Of The Sky", "I'll Bet You", "How Funky Is Your Chicken" and my favorite "Mama Got a Brand New Thing" where you get to hear all of them take the lead ! By 1968, the Jackson 5 were a headlining act for the All Star Floor Show at Chicago's The Guys' and Gals' Cocktail Lounge and Restaurant. From July 12–27, 1968, the Jackson 5 opened for Motown group Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers at Chicago's Regal Theater. Taylor was also very impressed with the boys, and he decided to make the commitment to bring them to Detroit and Motown. Joseph and the Jackson Five stayed on the floor of Bobby Taylor's Detroit apartment the night of July 22, while Taylor and Motown executive Suzanne de Passe arranged for the Jackson Five to audition for the label. On July 23, the Jackson Five had their Motown audition, for which they performed James Brown's then current hit "I Got the Feeling". Berry Gordy was not in attendance, but that now famous audition tape was sent to him in Los Angeles. Gordy's initial reluctance to sign the group disappeared when he finally saw the boys perform. Gordy decided to sign the Jackson Five to Motown, and hosted a party at his Detroit mansion on November 25, 1968 to introduce them to the Motown staff and stars. Motown began negotiations to buy out the Jackson Five's Steeltown contract, completing the deal in March 1969. By the summer, Bobby Taylor began producing the group's first recordings at Motown's Hitsville U.S.A. recording studio in Detroit. The early Taylor-produced Jackson Five records were all covers of both contemporary hits and Motown-standards, including Sly & the Family Stone's "Stand!" and their famous rendition of The Miracles' "Who's Lovin' You", written by Smokey Robinson. Gordy moved the Jackson Five and Joseph to California, and he and Suzanne de Passe began the process of grooming them as the label's next big act, while the rest of the family remained in Gary. While looking for a house in California, Joseph, Jermaine, Tito, and Jackie lived with Berry Gordy, while Michael and Marlon lived with Motown star Diana Ross. In the meantime, Motown's marketing team began preparing press kits and other promotion material to begin the Jackson 5's entrance into the mainstream music industry. Motown publicity significantly altered the group's history, reducing Michael's age from eleven to eight to make him appear cuter, identifying unrelated band musicians Johnny Jackson and Ronnie Rancifer as cousins of the Jacksons, and crediting Diana Ross with discovering the group. According to their official Motown biography, referenced in several early interviews and liner notes, Diana Ross (and, in some versions of the story, Berry Gordy alongside her) was introduced to the Jackson 5 by Gary, Indiana's mayor, Richard G. Hatcher, at a benefit concert that the Jackson 5 were described as having played for the mayor in 1969. Impressed, Ross (and Gordy) had the act signed to Motown and Ross personally acted as their mentor.
The Jackson 5's first single, "I Want You Back", was written and produced by four Motown songwriters and producers — Berry Gordy, Alphonzo Mizell, Deke Richards, and Freddie Perren — who were collectively billed as The Corporation--. The song reached number one in January, 1970.
Most of the early Jackson 5 singles were written and produced by The Corporation, who crafted for the Jackson 5 a sound that mixed the traditional "Motown Sound" with teenage-honed lyrics that they termed "bubblegum soul". The Jackson 5 became an instant sensation, with "I Want You Back" and its 1970 follow-ups "ABC", "The Love You Save," and "I'll Be There" all going to 1 on both the Billboard Pop Singles chart and the Billboard Soul Singles (R&B) chart. Other early Top 5 hits included "Mama's Pearl" and "Never Can Say Goodbye."
"Jackson 5 mania" swept the nation, and within a year of their debut the Jackson 5 were among the biggest names in popular music. The group essentially replaced The Supremes as Motown's main marketing focus, and, capitalizing upon the youth-oriented appeal of the Jackson brothers, Motown licensed dozens of Jackson 5-related juvenile products, including the now famous J5 Heart logo which appears on Johnny Jacksons drum kit and many of the Jackson 5's album covers, stickers, sewable patches, posters, and coloring books. A new teen magazine aimed at African-American youth, Right On!, began publication in 1971, and focused heavily on the Jackson 5; at least one Jackson adorned the cover of every issue published between January 1972 and April 1974. Animation producers Rankin/Bass produced The Jackson Five, a Saturday morning cartoon that debuted on September 11, 1971 and ran for two seasons on ABC. The Jackson 5 starred in two of their own television specials, Goin' Back to Indiana (aired September 16, 1971) and The Jackson 5 Show (aired November 5, 1972).
In 1971, Motown began a spin-off solo career for Michael, whose first single, "Got to Be There," was a Top 5 hit. Michael also sang the title track for the 1972 motion picture Ben. His other successful solo singles included "Rockin' Robin" and "I Wanna Be Where You Are" (both 1972). Jermaine started a solo career of his own in 1972, and had a Top Ten hit with his Shep and the Limelites cover "Daddy's Home" Jackie also recorded a solo album, but his releases failed to chart. Despite fan rumors that all three Jacksons might leave the group as they released solo work, the solo careers of Michael, Jermaine, and Jackie co-existed alongside that of the group as a whole, allowing Motown to expand the success and sales of Jackson 5-related releases and although it was never commercially successful, Jackie's 1973 solo album is a verrry underrated piece of work with great songs showing his awesome range and falsetto like "Love Don't Wanna Leave" Jackie would definitely get his props later on as a co-writer of many of the Jackson's best songs.
The Jackson 5 was also notable for its significant popularity with adolescent girls during the early 1970s. Thousands of young girls fell in love with the Jackson brothers, especially Jermaine and Michael. Michael Jackson's biographer, J. Randy Taraborrelli, has said that the elder brothers engaged in sexual relations with several of their female fans at hotels shared between them while younger brothers Michael and Marlon watched in the same room. Michael himself, despite being the most popular member of the group, would remain shy about dating for most of his adolescence. Tito was the first Jackson brother to marry, marrying his high school girlfriend Dee Dee in June 1972. Against the wishes of his father, Jermaine began a relationship with Berry Gordy's daughter Hazel. Jermaine and Hazel Gordy's relationship was highly publicized in magazines such as Right On!, Ebony, and Jet, and the two were married at a gala wedding ceremony held on December 15, 1973 at the Beverly Hills Hotel. After 1972, the Jackson 5's releases were less successful, but they still did very well and most of their Motown albums contained some great filler tracks that was always exciting to hear. Later Top 20 hits, mostly written and produced by Hal Davis, included "Lookin' Through the Windows" (1972) and the disco-styled "Dancing Machine" (1974), which popularized the "Robot" dance routine and alongside the pop-lock craze of the mid-70's started by urban youth, Michael, Marlon & Jackie mechanical movements in the "Dancing Machine" routine became a predecessor for the breakdancing movement that would later dominate the dance scene in the late 70's and 1980's. Jackson 5 albums declined somewhat in critical acclaim and financial success during the latter part of their Motown tenure, although LPs such as Lookin' Through the Windows (1972) and G.I.T: Get It Together (1973) frequently included successful album tracks, including their version of "Hum Along and Dance", a popular number in their live act.
Critics, the Jackson 5, and Joseph Jackson agreed that the main reason for the group's declining success was Motown's refusal to update their image. Although they played their own instruments on stage and had begun writing and producing songs in their own home recording studio, the Jacksons were not allowed to play on their own records or record their own material. Feeling that the Jackson 5 could be more of a success without Motown, which was by this time declining in success and popularity, Joseph began shopping for a new record deal for his sons. In 1975, Joseph negotiated a new recording contract with CBS Records, who offered a royalty rate of 20% per record, compared to Motown's standard 2.8%; and would allow the Jackson brothers to write and produce their own records and play their own instruments. After unsuccessfully attempting to talk the group into staying on the label, Motown sued for breach of contract. Although Motown eventually let the group go, the Jackson 5 were forced to change their name to The Jacksons, because Motown retained the "Jackson 5" trademark during the settlement of the lawsuit. The Jacksons also replaced Jermaine with the youngest Jackson brother, 14-year-old Randy, since Jermaine chose to stay with Motown and the Gordys. Randy had been an unofficial member of The Jackson 5 since 1972, playing congas onstage and dancing as part of their live act. Long story short, if this move wasn't made, "Thriller" and "Off The Wall" would've never been made. Although Jermaine wouldn't find strong success with Motown until 1980's "Let's Get Serious" written by Stevie Wonder , he released several excellent funk/soul/pop albums such as "Feel The Fire", "I Like Your Style", " Frontiers", "Jermaine (1980)" that showcased his velvet but strong vocal chops and more importantly, his tremendously underrated skills as a bass virtuoso on cuts like "You Need To Be Loved", "Get Up and Dance", "Happiness is", "The Pieces Fit" and the classic "Bass Odyssey". Bass pioneer Larry Graham of Sly & The Family Stone has said in several interviews that Jermaine Jackson and Keni Burke are two bass players he loved that emulated his style very well. In the footsteps of his father-in-law, Jermaine also played a strong A&R role by bringing a funk/soul/pop group from the midwest called Switch, who scored big with classics like "I Call Your Name" , "Best Beat in Town" and the most famous "There'll Never Be". The group was spearheaded by brothers Bobby and Tommy Debarge who brought in their younger siblings to the Motown at the start of the 1980's. As we all know, Debarge went on to become one of the baddest self-contained family groups of the 1980's with hit songs like "I Like it" , "Time will Reveal", "All This Love" and "Rhythm Of The Night"After losing the Jacksons, Motown would not have another success of their caliber for the duration of Berry Gordy's ownership of the label. Gordy often said of the Jackson 5 that they were, coming after the label's most famous acts, "the last big stars to come rolling off the Motown assembly line." In summer 1976, CBS television signed the Jackson family (including Michael, Marlon, Tito, Jackie, Randy, Rebbie, LaToya, and Janet) to appear in their own variety show, to compete with ABC's The Osmonds. The Jacksons debuted on June 16, 1976, and ran on CBS until its cancellation the following March. The show was the first variety show hosted by an African American family. At first, part of CBS's Philadelphia International Records division, and later moving over to Epic Records, the Jacksons continued releasing popular singles such as "Enjoy Yourself", "Good Times" and "Show You The Way To Go" (1976), produced by Philadelphia International's Kenneth Gamble & Leon Huff. After two LPs produced by Gamble and Huff, the Jacksons wanted artistic control, and produced their next LP, 1978's Destiny, on their own. The album included the Jacksons' biggest post-Motown single, "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)", which charted at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 and at number three on the Billboard R&B Singles chart. "Shake Your Body", written by Michael and Randy, sold over two million copies, attaining double-platinum status. Destiny also went platinum, and peaked at number 11 on the Billboard 200 album chart and number three on the R&B album charts. In 1979, the Jacksons received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1978, Michael starred alongside Diana Ross in the Motown/Universal Pictures motion picture The Wiz, an adaptation of the Broadway musical based upon L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Quincy Jones was the producer of the film's songs, and he and Michael began work on Michael's first Epic solo album, Off the Wall, the next year. Off the Wall, released in 1979, sold 20 million copies worldwide and featured four Top 10 hit singles and two number-one singles, causing some speculation about whether Michael would leave the Jacksons. Michael Jackson continued to perform with his brothers on the multi-platinum, Triumph in 1980, which featured the hits "Lovely One", "Walk Right Now", "Heartbreak Hotel", and the Randy and Jackie-penned classic "Can You Feel It". The video "Can You Feel it" is the first longform special effects video and still to this day is my favorite because this video which Michael had a lot to do with the concept, was a predecessor to the groundbreaking "Thriller" long form video that changed the music video art form forever. 1981 saw the release of the gold-selling and widely-influential The Jacksons Live!, using recordings from the "Triumph" tour. In 1988, Rolling Stone magazine described the Triumph tour as one of the best 25 tours from 1967 to 1987. The Triumph LP and tour were successful, but were outperformed by Michael's 1982 LP Thriller. Thriller went on to become the second most successful album ever in the United States (after the Eagles' Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975)), and to date stands as the world's best-selling album of all time. The Motown 25 television special, broadcast on NBC on May 16, 1983, featured a reunion performance between Jermaine and the other brothers. Outside of one 1979 appearance on the TV show Midnight Special this was the original Jackson 5's first performance in nearly seven years. The Motown 25 Jackson 5 reunion was overshadowed, however, by Michael's landmark performance of "Billie Jean" on the same program, which introduced his trademark "moonwalk" dance which was taught to him by former Soul Train dancer/choreographer Jeffrey Daniels who is mostly known as a member of popular R&B/Pop group Shalamar. He would later work with Michael for videos off the "Bad" album in 1987. The Jacksons released the heavily underrated, quickly released but 8x multi-platinum album Victory in 1984, featuring the hit singles "State of Shock", the Jackie Jackson penned "Torture" and the surprise R&B smash led by Marlon, "Body" and supported the album with the massively successful Victory World Tour. The Victory album and tour marked the official return of Jermaine to the group's lineup who was already enjoying mainstream success with his multi-platinum self-titled album that featured classics like "Dynamite", "Tell me I'm Not Dreaming" which is a smokin duet with Michael and the most memorable classic and video "Do what you Do". It's also the first Jackson album where everyone had their own song including Randy with "One More Chance" later covered by little sister Janet for a b-side to one of her hits and for the first time and last time, Tito had his own song where he sings lead called "We Can Change The World". In a interview for this tour, it was mentioned that the brothers recorded 20 to 30 songs for this album but narrowed it down to a measly eight. I pray to God that someone releases the deluxe edition of this album so I and other die hard Jackson fans can hear this. Shortly after the Victory Tour, Michael left the Jacksons, as his solo career had led to the success of Thriller and its singles. His name recognition as a solo act had also grown, despite touring as part of a group. The other brothers eventually drifted apart to take on solo projects (although most of them appeared with Michael on the U.S. For Africa single "We Are the World" in 1985). The Jacksons sorta reunited for one last album, 2300 Jackson Street in 1989. While every Jackson sibling except for LaToya appeared on the title track, a 9 R&B hit single, most of the album featured Jermaine, Jackie, Tito, and Randy as the line up. Michael Jackson's fame as a solo act as well as the growing fame of the group's youngest sister, Janet Jackson, had overshadowed the group entirely. A CD compilation of hits from the CBS/Epic years, The Essential Jacksons, was released in 2004, as was a separate compilation assembled by Universal/Hip-O, The Jacksons Story.
It wasn't until after their induction in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame that all six brothers would finally reunite after 20 years in 2001 on the T.V show celebrating Michael Jackson's 30th anniversary in music for an unforgettable performance that would be the talk of the whole show. In recent news, it has been reported that a possible Jacksons reunion could happen next year after Jermaine said in the ITV/ITV2 talk show, Katie & Peter: Unleashed, that Michael agreed to partake on a possible reunion tour with his brothers stating "he was at the meetings, he will be involved." Though Michael nor his spokespeople have confirmed such meetings or even confirmation that he'll participate in the tour, Jermaine stated that Michael will do it because "he is a Jackson, he has to be". Jermaine said that Michael had agreed to do something with his brothers prior to his 2005 trial on child molestation charges and said the original quintet and baby brother Randy are also working on a new album.Tito Jackson, like his father before him, organized his three sons into a musical group called 3T, who had a 2 UK hit, titled "Why?" and an American 1 R&B song "Anything" in August 1996, (which featured a guest appearance from Michael Jackson). Soon afterwards, Tito began a low-key career as a blues musician. Randy Jackson had a hit group known as Randy and the Gypsies in which they did quality work but were very underrated. They still managed to become what was considered to be the 2nd biggest concert draw within the framework of the (black) American concert scene during the mid 90's. A lot of these videos are posted on U-Tube. Now that we have lost the gloved one, we will never see that same package again or if at least not the same way. Michael was the special sauce in the Jacksons ingredient and he will be missed.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5-D_6ReWjM (THE EARLY YEARS) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrAsuBnWvdE&feature=related (THE LAST REUNION AT MSG: PART 1)
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Friday, September 19, 2008
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Current mood:  inspired
Category: Music
Welcome to my Homage blog series where we pay tributes to the master architects of this music biz while they are still here and not when they die. To start this one off, here's a question:
WHAT WOULD MUSIC BE LIKE WITHOUT SLY & THE FAMILY STONE ?!
The extroadinary funk rhythm guitar work of Freddie Stone (I got a lot of my rhythm technique form this dude)
The soaring vocal and piano work of Rose Stone
The exhilirating syncopted drum style of Greg Errico
The 1-2 punch brass combo of Cynthia Robinson & Jerry Martini
The Innovative bass slap precision of Larry Graham (He is the reason why I play Bass !)
and of course, Sylvester Stewart aka Sly who was basically all of his band members wrapped in one human on various levels ! his high octane, manic organ playing, his bass playing and the fact that he played guitar the way I do...without a pick so you know why that is one among many reasons why he is one of my biggest heroes !
The "Greatest Hits" album was among the first albums my mother bought for me when she discovered that her son was becoming a ferocious musician at age 8. It would really take up this whole blog to explain the impact they have on me as an artist and I often pay homage to them on stage when I can. I also thank the Lord that I had the pleasure of meeting both Rosie Stone and Larry Graham to let them know what they mean to me as one of young cats coming up in this game !!
Sly's humble beginnings as a child prodigy along with brother Freddie and sister Rosie can be traced back to their Gospel roots which has always been the cornerstone of their style no matter what was going on. In addition to attending school for musical composition & theory, he was also a popular DJ for KSOL in California which is where the quest and formation of his vision for a multi-cutural group began and the rest is history .
Sly is truly one of the most creative visionaries in music history in terms of songwriting, structure and style. It's because of his genius that him and the rest of the band became the first to take the Funk genre that James Brown created and expand on it. Sly & the Family Stone sound was a melting pot of many influences and cultures, including James Brown proto-funk, Motown pop, Stax soul, Broadway showtunes, and psychedelic rock music. Wah-wah guitars, distorted fuzz basslines, church-styled organ lines, and horn riffs provided the musical backdrop for the vocals of the band's four lead singers. Sly Stone, Freddie Stone, Larry Graham, and Rose Stone traded off on various bars of each verse, a style of vocal arrangement unusual and revolutionary at that time in popular music. Cynthia Robinson shouted ad-libbed vocal directions to the audience and the band; for example, urging everyone to "get on up and 'Dance to the Music'" and demanding that "all the squares go home!"
The first incarnation of Funkadelic owes it's existence partially to Sly because George Clinton was such a huge fan of Sly's writing technique and saw where he was trying to go with possibilty of black artists taking on Rock head on but still keeping the Funk-Soul thing in tact. The two would become the best of friends over years often collaborating with each other as well as getting in trouble with the law.
Prince's love for Sly was obvious since the beginning of his career with the Revolution which included both black and white members as well as skilled female musicians and songs like "Strange Relationship"and "Shy" has the Sly stamp on it and lastly, The Jackson 5 were influenced heavy by them and often performed their songs in their live shows as well as adopting somewhat of the same clothing style. Jermaine Jackson always said that his two Bass playing influences are James Jamerson and Larry Graham while Michael with his high-pitched voice always made references to Rosie on songs like "Zip Pa Di Dah Do Dah". Motown Records as a whole couldn't escape the influence of Sly thanks to genius producer Norman Whitfield who introduced these new sounds to his boss Berry Gordy. Take one listen to The Temptations "Cloud Nine" and "Psychedelic Shack" albums which were all produced by Norman and you can closely see that he was shouting out Sly in every way possible from the Wah-Wah Fuzz guitars, Psychedelic social lyrical content to the splitting lead vocals. In recent years, new school artists like D'Angelo, Maxwell and Tony, Toni, Tone have always gave serious nods to Sly's music in their sound and many rappers have also sampled the group's catalog.
The band's lyrics for the band's songs were usually pleas for peace, love, and understanding among people. These rallies against vices such as racism, discrimination, and self-hate were underscored by the lineup for and onstage appearance of the band. European Americans Gregg Errico and Jerry Martini were members of the band at a time when integrated performance bands were virtually unheard of. integration had only recently become enforced by law. Females Cynthia Robinson and Rosie Stone played instruments onstage, rather than just providing vocals or serving as visual accompaniment for the male members. The band's gospel-styled singing endeared them to black audiences; their rock music elements and wild costuming—including Sly's large Afro and tight leather outfits, Rose's blond wig, and the other members' loud psychedelic clothing—caught the attention of mainstream audiences.
The first 6 Sly & The Family Stone albums were my musical textbooks growing up from 'A Whole New Thing" to "Small Talk". Jams like "Underdog" , "I Cannot Make It", "Love City", "Into My Own Thing", "Are You Ready", "Plastic Jim", "Color Me True", "M'Lady", "Hot Fun In The Summertime" , "Sing A Simple Song", "You Can Make It If You Try". Sly coined the phrase "Different Strokes for Different Folks" in the band's classic "Everyday People". He also explored the racial tension of 1960's with "Don't Call Me Nigger Whitey" and brought Gospel into the mainstream with "I Want To Take You Higher". And of course, "Thank You Falettin Me Be Mice Elf Agin" showcased the innovative slap bass technique of Larry Graham that changed the world of Bass playing forever as many Bass players began to cop Larry's style of "thumpin and pluckin" from Louis Johnson, Marcus Miller, Victor Wooten and many others who have helped to spread the Larry Graham technique throughout the industry.
Though all these albums were great and changed the game nevertheless, a study in how stripped, raw and aggressive Funk can be, the classic albums "There's A Riot Going On", "Fresh" & "Small Talk" are clearly the most influential albums of his catalog that got those catergories. These albums would set the funk tone for the mid 70's with groups like The Ohio Players, B.T Express and Undisputed Truth. "There's a Riot Goin' On" embraced a darker, colder more foreboding sound, while also rejecting the band's previous successful melodic formula that was featured on their hit singles. It's also the first album to include a drum machine and with the exception of full band cut jams like "Running Away" , "You Caught Me Smiling" and of course, "Thank You (The Slow "Africa" version), Sly played most of the instruments himself along with Freddie, Rosie, Jerry and Cynthia playing their respective roles friends Billy Preston and Bobby Womack on classics like "Family Affair", "Luv N Haight", and "Brave & Strong". This album also marked the end of the original incarnation of the group as Greg Errico and Larry Graham who went on to have a very successful career in the 1970'swith his Funk-Rock band Graham Central Station and in the early 80's with his classic 1 ballad "One in A Million" The heavily underrated Rusty Allen and Drummer Andy Newmark and his background section featuring younger sister Vet, Little Sister filled in the gaps as Sly went in these new directions
The "Fresh" album was more upbeat than its predecessor but still retains much of Riot's dark, funky feel. We often referred to this album as "Swamp Funk" because of just heavy funk vibe alone with classic jams like "Let Me Have it All", "Satisfaction", "In Time", "Thankful and Thoughtful" and of course, "If You Want Me To Say". In mine and many other opinions, "Small Talk" is truly the last testament of Sly's genius with songs like "Say You Will" , "Can't Strain My Brain", "Hold on" and my personal favorite "Loose Booty". Although there were two more follow-ups like the great "High On You" and "Heard You Miss me" , it clearly wasn't the same vibe anymore and Sly became more known for missing shows and being under the influence during interviews. He said it best in "Thank You" , "Thank You for the party...but I could never stay". He would appear briefly in the 80's doing the Tonight Show, briefly joining George Clinton's unit and appearing on Jesse Johnson's " Craazy" which was a top 10 R&B hit
Though it's no secret, Sly's infamous drug use, reclusiveness, wild stories sometimes gets more attention than the man's contribution to music so I chose not to focus on that aspect like most journalists do. Sly's imprint on the music world can never be denied and us Funk Soldiers have too much to thank him for. All I know is that it was good to finally see him come out of hiding complete with a silver mohawk and a new version of his name plate belt at 2006 Grammy awards where him and the band was paid tribute to (in true Sly fashion, he sang a few lines and exit the stage) and I was even more excited when I heard that he started doing shows again in Las Vegas and New York. That should make up for him not performing with the rest of the band members when they were inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall Of Fame in the early 90's ( I was kinda mad at him for that). I even hear now that he has an album that he'd been working on for years and along with original members Cynthia, Jerry and Rusty, Sly and Rosie's children have also become part of the band displaying their multi-talents. It most definitely do run in the family......Stone that is ;) SLY, I JUST WANNA SAY THAT I LOOOOOVE YOU AND I THANK YOU AND THE REST OF THE CLAN FOR WHAT YOU DID AND STILL DOING FOR MUSIC AND MOST OF ALL, THE TRUE FUNK SOLDIERS LIKE MYSELF WHO WILL CONTINUE TO UPHOLD YOUR NAME IN HIGH ESTEEM !! ROCK ON DUDE !!
CHECK OUT THESE CLASSIC PERFORMANCES FROM SLY & THE FAMILY STONE:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDF7d_hzF1U&feature=related SLY MEDLEY (1969)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfzK1ck7xf0&feature=related
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok-LYGeJa30 (Ed Sullivan 1968)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UliipvHKuk (Family Affair 1973)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZkeMGrXo4w - (Stand ! 1974)
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Tuesday, August 12, 2008
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Current mood:  touched
Category: Music
Greetings Earthlings !
Welcome to this very special homage blog series
As most of you may know, we lost not only comedian icon Bernie Mac this weekend but we lost truly one of the greatest pioneers in Soul/Funk genre, Black Moses: Mr Issac Hayes
Notice how I say pioneer because this man was MORE than just the dude who made the theme song "Shaft" or the always -horny chef character he voiced in the extremely hilarious controversial cartoon, South Park which btw gave him a unlikely UK 1 with funny as hell "Chocolate Salty Balls". He was one of the few black artists that set trends in all three major mediums: Fashion, Film & Music. This is the reason why I do homage blogs because truthfully, I don't see ANYONE in my age group or genre respecting or paying our music architects homage. And when a legend like this leaves, everyone wants to do tributes on award shows fronting like they really know these people's history or really listened to their music. I blame that on the producers of these award shows because they'll just throw anybody up there for ratings. Here's proof: on a lot of tribute medley's during awards show, you can see some of these artists reading a f****n teleprompter for lyrics....WHAT HAPPENED TO REHEARSALS TO GET THE SONG DOWNPACKED TO SHOW THESE PEOPLE THE REAL RESPECT THEY DESERVE ? don't get me started !
On the fashion end, his bald head, shades, gold chains (he was the first star besides Liberace to wear excessive bling bling) made him a standout as well as a definitive statement of Black power especially in a time where Afro hairstyles was the common trademark. In true Memphis fashion, Issac Hayes went against the grain and automatically became a sex symbol
For films, Hayes rewrote the book on film scoring & soundtrack with one of the greatest & most recognizable theme songs in Pop culture for the first legit critically acclaimed movie that helped to start off the Blaxploitation era: Shaft.....Can you dig it ? Though wah-wah pedal style guitar was already a common thing in urban music, Hayes' use of this style on the theme song turned it into a necessary artform for musical expression & impact and nearly all of the soundtracks & film scores for later Blaxploitation flicks followed the Issac Hayes blueprint. Btw, he was the first black artist to win an Oscar for a theme song opening the door for future winners like Prince
And while we are on the subject of music, Issac was already a celebrated songwriter-producer & arranger before his groundbreaking solo career. In the 1960's, He and partner David Porter were the masterminds behind some of the gigantic hits of famed Stax/Atlantic artists but more famously, Sam & Dave such as "I'm a Soul Man", "Hold On I'm Comin", "When Something is Wrong With My Baby", "I Thank You" & "Wrap It Up" which have all been covered numerous times and still continues to have impact. Issac would change the game not only with his thick baritone voice but with his classic opus "Hot Buttered Soul", but also with his excellent combination of Soul/Funk & even Rock laid underneath a classical string ensemble showing us that blacks can conduct & compose string parts. Another giant musical pioneer named Barry White definitely took these cues from Issac to jump start his own evolution in the 1970's. And as most die hard fans know, Issac is also the first to have what we call "long players" with songs strecthing beyond the normal 3 or 4 minutes. James Brown did it first but only at 7 minutes the most. Issac's extended workouts which often included rap dialogue which predates hip-hop and long instrument grooves & solos would stretch out to 17-20 minutes.
Issac also established a rep for taking pop standards and revamping them into a funk/soul barrage such as "By The Time I Get To Phoneix", "The Look Of Love" and most famously, "Walk On By" which is truly one of the greatest & roughest remakes of all-time. Just ask the countless rappers like Jay-Z, Nas, Ludacris, Notorious B.I.G, Geto Boys & who made him one of the most sampled artists in hip-hop by sampling his innovative music to tell their street stories. In street culture, Issac's music has often been referred to as "Drive-by music" or "Pimp music" music because of the dark sinister arrangements that reflected various ghetto lifestyles with dazzling orchestrated stringd, acid rock guitar, creepy church organ and hard but steady fatback pocket drumming.
Didn't I say this man is more than what we think ? let's get into the life part....
Isaac Hayes was born in the rural poverty of a sharecropper's family on August 20, 1942, in Covington, Tennessee, about thirty miles south of Memphis. Orphaned in infancy, he and his sister Willette were raised up by their maternal grandparents, Willie and Rushia Addie-Mae Wade. They instilled love in Hayes for the simple pleasures of country life. "We raised our own foods," he says, "we raised most of our crops, we had cattle, we had pork. Our corn was ground at the grist mill and we had molasses at the sorghum mill. A sack of flour would last several months. My grandmother did a lot of canning, preparing food and putting it up in the winter. My grandfather would go hunting and bring in a bunch of rabbits, so we were good. When we came to the city of Memphis, we didn't have anything to compare it to."
Memphis was supposed to represent new opportunity, and it did for awhile, as the 7-year old saw his first supermarket and enjoyed his first Popsicle, and grandfather found work at a tomato factory. But soon his health failed, he became disabled, and when Hayes was 11, his grandfather died. "That's when we really fell on hard times," Hayes remembers, "when I started doing the agricultural work like picking cotton." Ironically, his stately home today in East Memphis looks out on those same fields where cotton grew for nearly two centuries. As a youngster he ran errands, cut lawns, delivered groceries and wood to homes for fuel, cleaned bricks for two cents apiece, and shined shoes on Beale Street.
To an adolescent, the poverty was stifling; combined with the self-consciousness brought on by puberty, believing he wasn't dressed sharp enough to attract the girls, Hayes secretly dropped out of Manassas High School. After six weeks, a delegation of teachers arrived at the house and told his grandmother the news. "God, I felt like I had gone through the floor, but they said, 'This young man has too much to offer, we cannot afford to lose him.'" The teachers gathered their hand-me-down clothes for Hayes, who resolved to stick it out and get his diploma. The experience left an indelible mark on him for life, and Hayes' dedication to literacy, education and teaching initiatives is an outgrowth of what those teachers did for him. Years later, when the State Of Tennessee honored him with a marker, Hayes chose to place it at Manassas High.
Hayes sang in church since age five, but stopped when his voice cracked in adolescence. Years later, "when I started back singing, my voice was in the basement." He was persuaded by his high school guidance counselor to enter a talent show, singing "Looking Back," Nat King Cole's 1958 hit. "When I finished, the house was on its feet, man, and I was a hit." Overnight the girls, even those a couple of grades ahead, were sending lunch invitations. "Career change! So I started pursuing music big time."
He joined the school band and learned to play saxophone from Lucian Coleman (brother of hard-bopper George Coleman). Hayes sang gospel with a group called the Morning Stars, doo-wop with Sir Isaac & the Doo-Dads, the Teen Tones, and the Ambassadors, even some jazz with the Ben Branch house band at Curry's Club Tropicana out in north Memphis. He started playing sax and singing blues with Calvin Valentine and The Swing Cats, and doing prom dates with The Missiles. He took a crash course learning piano by literally faking it for the first time on a New Year's Eve R&B job at the Southern Club with Jeb Stuart, "because I needed the money."
Hayes was finally graduated at age 21 from Manassas, Class of 1962. It was the year after the first releases began to trickle out of a new label called Stax Records, part of the Satellite Records company and Satellite Record Store that started back in '58, housed in the old Capitol Theatre on the corner of College & McLemore. Hayes had won seven college scholarships for vocal music that he chose not to pursue. Instead, he became adept enough at the piano to land a job with baritone saxophonist bandleader Floyd Newman at the Plantation Inn across the river in West Arkansas. Newman was also the staff baritone musician on Stax recording sessions and was up for a date himself with his own working group in late 1963: "Frog Stomp," the only solo single ever cut by Newman, was co-written by and features Hayes (on piano), the first major notch in his discography at Stax Records.
"During the time that I was there," Hayes recalls of the session, " Jim Stewart, the proprietor of Stax looked at me and said, 'Look, Booker T is off in Indiana U., from Booker T & the MG's, and I need a keyboard player so you want the job?' 'Yeaaa!' I jumped at it." His first paid sessions were with Otis Redding in early 1964, and Hayes was soon a ubiquitous presence at Stax. Not long after, co-writer and producer David Porter suggested to Hayes that they collaborate as songwriters. After a few modest starts for Porter ("Can't See You When I Want To"), Carla Thomas "How Do You Quit [Someone You Love]"), and Sam & Dave ("I Take What I Want"), "everything just blew up big time," Hayes says.
As writers (under the name 'Soul Children'), arrangers and producers, the Hayes-Porter duo became Stax's hottest commodity starting in 1966-67. Sam & Dave's "You Don't Know Like I Know," "Hold On! I'm Comin'," "Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody," "When Something Is Wrong With My Baby," "I Thank You," "Wrap It Up," and the R&B Grammy award-winning "Soul Man" were among some 200 Hayes-Porter compositions that became standards. For Carla Thomas there was "Let Me Be Good To You," "B-A-B-Y" and "Something Good (Is Going To Happen To You)." Johnnie Taylor scored with "I Had a Dream" and "I Got To Love Somebody's Baby." Mable John's one and only hit was Hayes-Porter's "Your Good Thing (Is About To End)." Presenting Isaac Hayes, his debut solo LP was recorded as a trio (with MG's bassist Duck Dunn and drummer Al Jackson) in the wee hours after an all-night Stax party. The intimate, sensual jazz-flavored jam session approach (including three 9-minute versions of standards) did not reach the charts, but served as a blueprint for future LPs.
Hayes' work with Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, Booker T & the MG's, the Mar-Keys, the Bar-Kays, Rufus & Carla Thomas, and virtually the entire Stax roster created what was known as the Memphis Sound. It transformed popular music, was absorbed by everyone from Elvis Presley and Ray Charles to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. History notes that, with the exception of Booker T & the MG's, Isaac Hayes worked on more Stax sessions and tracks than any other musician.
On April 4, 1968, as Stax Records was finalizing its sale to Gulf & Western Corporation, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated at the Lorraine Hotel in downtown Memphis. Hayes, who had marched for Civil Rights with King, was scheduled to meet with him that very day. "It affected me for a whole year," Hayes told Rob Bowman in Soulsville U.S.A.: The Story Of Stax Records. "I could not create properly. I was so bitter and so angry. I thought, What can I do? Well, I can't do a thing about it so let me become successful and powerful enough where I can have a voice to make a difference. So I went back to work and started writing again."
He emerged in the summer 1969 with the landmark Hot Buttered Soul, and the career of Isaac Hayes would never be the same again. The LP was uniquely composed of four lush, sensual arrangements, framed by the opening 12-minute version of "Walk On By" and the closing 18-minute take on "By the Time I Get To Phoenix." Both were edited into a double-A sided single, and both sides became top 40/R&B crossover hits. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart for 10 weeks, the LP stayed on the Pop chart for an amazing 81 weeks. It forced the music industry, for the first time, to conceive of Soul music as an album art form. In a new emerging age of Afro-centrism and Black Power, devoting the entire LP cover to Hayes' shaven head was a revolutionary statement.
Hot Buttered Soul was issued on the new Stax subsidiary label Enterprise (yes, named for the "Star Trek" spaceship) for whom Hayes would record for the next five years, and deliver a record-setting seven 1 R&B albums - more 1's than any artist of the period. In fact, Hayes charted a phenomenal 20 albums on the R&B and Pop charts between 1969 and '80 - not a week went by in the early '70s without two Isaac Hayes albums on the charts, and sometimes three. There can be no overstating his impact on popular music, reflected in his first ballot vote into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.
A pair of albums in 1970 reprised the format of the tightly-arranged extended versions of original material and reworked standards - The Isaac Hayes Movement (7 weeks at 1, with "I Stand Accused") and ...To Be Continued (11 weeks at 1, with the original version of "Ike's Rap," a decade before Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight"!) By now, the silky smooth romantic rap soliloquies had become a Hayes trademark.
The arrival of the Shaft movie, soundtrack double-LP, and theme-song single in the summer 1971 was a career-defining event - the image of Isaac Hayes loomed at least as large as the film's star Richard Roundtree or director Gordon Parks, and all three embodied a new era of Black empowerment. Shaft was the first album in history by a solo black artist to hit 1 on both the Pop and R&B chart (14 weeks, making it the 3 R&B album of the entire decade of the '70s). At the Academy Awards the following year, Hayes became the first African-American composer to win the Oscar for Best Musical Score. In addition to generating three Grammy awards, the music from Shaft won a Golden Globe award, the NAACP Image Award, and the prestigious Edison award, Europe's highest music honor.
Again, Hayes had set a high musical standard whose gritty, staccato voicings would echo in movie and television soundtracks for decades to come. He was quickly assigned to score the 1972 television series "The Men" (starring Robert Conrad), whose theme became a Pop/R&B hit. The summer 1974 would see the release of his next two movie soundtrack albums, Tough Guys (from the movie Three Tough Guys, Hayes' first co-starring movie role as a macho character - though the acting was horrible as well as the funny fight scenes, it was still good just to see Issac strecth out his talents), and Truck Turner (in which Hayes starred in the title role of a tough guy again). A third film role offered a comedy turn in 1975, It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time (with John Candy).
Meanwhile, Shaft's success (it charted for 16 months) earned Hayes a second double-LP in 1971: Black Moses (1 for 7 weeks, with "Never Can Say Goodbye"), whose nickname reluctantly stuck with him for years afterward. A long spell of touring throughout Europe and the U.S. in 1972 (including the Wattstax Festival in August) introduced many audiences to Hayes for the first time, an imposing figure in his shades and gold chains. It was Isaac Hayes who turned chains - once symbols of slavery and degradation - into ornaments. The live show was captured on his third consecutive double-LP, which arrived in '73: Live At the Sahara Tahoe (1 for 2 weeks).
Later that year came the album "Joy" aside from its title tune, an R&B/Pop crossover hit, it included "I Love You That's All," which became a sampler's delight for everyone from TLC and Massive Attack, to Eric B. & Rakim and Big Daddy Kane. In the last decade or so, Hayes' work has gone on to be sampled nearly 200 times (officially, that is), on recordings by (among others) Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, DJ Quik, Ice Cube, Destiny's Child, Tricky, Mase. Portishead, Yo-To, and the late TuPac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.
By the time his two 1974 soundtracks LPs (Tough Guys and Truck Turner) were issued by Stax/Enterprise, relations with the label and business disagreements had deteriorated to the point where Hayes severed his ties. That same year, he made his TV debut in a recurring role on "The Rockford Files" as Gandolph Fitch, aka Rockfish. In 1975, Hayes launched his own new record label: HBS, or Hot Buttered Soul (via ABC Records). His first new album, Chocolate Chip (1 for 7 weeks, with its title track R&B hit), showed him adapting to the disco era, but with his musical identity intact.
Hayes followed up with three new HBS albums in 1976, all top 20 R&B chart entries: Disco Connection (an instrumental LP showcasing the Isaac Hayes Movement), Groove-A-Thon (introducing his female backup singers, Hot Buttered Soul Unlimited), and Juicy Fruit (Disco Freak). His tour with Dionne Warwick was chronicled in early '77 on the final HBS release, the live double-LP A Man And a Woman, recorded at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. (Hayes and Warwick backed it up with an appearance together on "The Rockford Files.") Business setbacks had taken their toll, however, and Hayes was forced to file for bankruptcy. It would be decades before he would see his solid gold Cadillac Eldorado again (a relic of the Stax prosperity), liquidated by the IRS in 1977, but finally found and restored for display in 2003 at the Soulsville Museum.
He emerged at the end of 1977 with a new record deal (Polydor), a new home base (Atlanta and its Master Sound Studios), and a new album, New Horizon. The next LP, 1978's For the Sake Of Love, brought a strong return to the charts with "Zeke The Freak." This followed through on the top 10 album Don't Let Go, whose title single was his first major R&B/Pop crossover hit in five years. His final album of the '70s was Royal Rappin's, the unforgettable collaboration with Millie Jackson that spun off the single, "Do You Wanna Make Love."
In addition to releasing new albums in 1980 and '81, And Once Again and A Lifetime Thing, respectively, Hayes produced albums at this time for Linda Clifford (I'm Yours), Donald Byrd, and the Masqueraders. After his 1981 film role as the bad guy in John Carpenter's Escape From New York, Hayes took a well-earned five year break to spend more time with his family. During this period, he began to turn more and more to acting, starting with roles on tv's "The A-Team" (1985), "Hunter" (1986), and "Miami Vice" (1987), then a made-for-TV movie, Jailbait: Betrayed By Innocence, and another pair of tough guy features films, Counterforce and Dead Aim (1987).
Since then, not a year has gone without Isaac Hayes undertaking a movie role or two. The three dozen or so feature films that he has done since 1990 would include Fire, Ice & Dynamite (with Roger Moore), Guilty As Charged (with Rod Steiger, 1991), Final Judgment (Brad Dourif, 1992), Posse (Mario Van Peebles, 1993), Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men In Tights (1993), It Could Happen To You (Nicolas Cage, 1994), Once Upon a Time... When we Were Colored (Richard Roundtree, 1995), Flipper (Paul Hogan, 1996), Six Ways To Sunday (Debbie Harry, 1997), Ninth Street (Martin Sheen, 1999, for which Hayes also scored the soundtrack), Reindeer Games (Ben Affleck, 2000), Shaft (Samuel L. Jackson, 2000), A Man Called Rage (Lance Henriksen, 2002), and the brand new made-for-tv movie Book Of Days (with Wil Wheaton).
At the same time, there have also been roles on a number of tv series, including "Tales From the Crypt," "The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air," "Sliders," "The Hughleys," "The Education of Max Bickford," "Fastlane," and as recently as May 2003, back-to-back appearances on UPN's "Girlfriends" starring Diana's daughter, Tracee Ellis Ross.
Meanwhile, in 1988, Hayes was part of an all-star cast in the Keenan Ivory Wayans comedy, I'm Gonna 'Git You, Sucka. By satirizing the very movies that Shaft had inspired over the past decade and a half, it turned those movies into classics and gave the genre a festival marquee name: Blaxploitation films. Directors such as Robert Townshend, Spike Lee, the Hughes Brothers, and John Singleton would lead a new generation of Black filmmakers who would acknowledge their debt to Shaft and the movies they grew up watching as teenagers in the '70s. Issac stole the show in several scenes including the famous one where the guy he is about to fight says "Wait....I don't know that Karate s***" and Issac says making fun of his own "Truck Turner" movie "Me neither....wanna pretend ?" (LMAO)
On the music side, Hayes had returned to the forefront in late 1986 with a new record deal (Columbia) and a new album, U-Turn, which boasted his first top 10 R&B single in some 13 years, an update of "Ike's Rap." The rap's strong anti-crack message resonated to the extent that its lyric, "Don't be a resident of crack city" was adopted as the slogan of a rehab center in Detroit. By the time his second Columbia album showed up in 1988, Love Attack, the crack epidemic had become so pervasive that Hayes agreed to become a lecturer at colleges and prisons, inspiring students and inmates to fulfill their lives' potentials without drugs.
Hayes' role as a humanitarian began to take sharper focus in late 1991, when he and Barry White traveled to the Ivory Coast in Africa to shoot a video for "Dark & Lovely (you over there)," the long time dream for fans single from White's classic comeback album "Put Me In Your Mix". The following year, Hayes and Dionne Warwick accepted an invitation by the Cultural Minister of Ghana (Ivory Coast's eastern neighbor) to visit the Cape Coast and Elmina slave castles. Walking through the dungeons, listening to the horrifying stories told by the guide, Hayes was overwhelmed with emotion.
"It was almost like I heard the voices of my ancestors saying, 'We've come back home through you. The circle is complete. Now, you know what you must do'," he later told a journalist. When the weeping was done, Hayes realized it was not enough to help finance the renovation of the castles, there was bigger work to be done in Africa: He asked how much it would cost to build a school. Returning to America, Hayes took his energy on the road, speaking to African-American community groups and Black expos around the country. He encouraged everyone he met to visit Africa if they could, to interact with the people, or at the very least to support economic development.
One speaking engagement in Queens, New York, was attended by princess Naa Asie Ocansey of Ghana, who phoned a week later. "Mr. Hayes," she asked, "would you like to be a king?" She had told her father, Nene Kubi III, a 'king-maker,' of Hayes' commitment and he said, "We need to honor this man." The coronation rituals that usually took up to two weeks were condensed to two days in late December 1992. The spectacle was attended by Public Enemy who did concerts with Hayes at Cape Coast Castle and in Accra, Ghana's capital city.
Hayes was given a royal name: Nene Katey Ocansey I. "Nene means king in the Ga Dialect," he explains. "Katey means brave warrior who can calm the wild beast in the elements. Ocansey is a family name, the most powerful of the ten clans in my region, Ada, which means I do as I say!" He was appointed King For Development over the region and given land on which to build a palace. But the palace would wait: "You need education over here," he told them, "you need literacy."
In 1995, newly signed to Virgin Records (via its Pointblank label), Hayes took a typically bold step by simultaneously issuing two new CDs: Raw And Refined, by the Isaac Hayes Movement, was a set of newly recorded and old instrumental tracks, some dating back a quarter-century to the Stax era; while Branded was a lavishly arranged set of newly recorded tracks, including one with David Porter. Among the highlights were the 7-minute take on the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer In the City," and the Watoto de Afrika children's choir singing on the 6-minute version of Sting's "Fragile." Hayes finished out the year speaking at the historic Million Man March on Washington.
For 1998's Blue Brothers 2000 movie soundtrack, Hayes joined an all-star group dubbed the Louisiana Gator Boys, including B.B. King, Gary U.S. Bonds, Eric Clapton, Bo Diddley, Dr. John, Billy Preston, Lou Rawls, Koko Taylor, Jimmie Vaughan, Steve Winwood, Grover Washington, Jr., and about a dozen others - for jams on Bobby Blue Bland's "Turn On Your Love Light" and Bonds' "New Orleans."
True to his promise, and thanks to the hard work of the IHF, Hayes was able to return to Ghana in the summer 1998 and officiate at the groundbreaking ceremony for the school, as part of the Asafotufiami Cultural festival in Ada. The 8,000 square foot facility, called NekoTech, enjoyed its ribbon-cutting two years later. Today, it not only delivers literacy, education, computer technology and Internet access, and health education, but also houses a chapter of the World Literacy Crusade. Johnson & Johnson, a major donor, also shipped 400 bicycles over, which are used for races around the school to promote HIV awareness to children and adults.
His concern with literacy at home is well known. In November 1998, he took part in groundbreaking ceremonies for the $60 million Central Library in Memphis. He and Lisa Marie Presley, a lifelong friend and fellow Scientologist, established a mission for the organization in their hometown of Memphis. The mission now houses a LEAP center (Learning Education Ability Program), "for kids after school to learn how to study, to learn how to read and write." The IHF continues to partner with other nonprofit organizations to support global causes that serve community needs, actively promoting celebrity benefit concerts (like the Jam For Literacy at the House Of Blues in Los Angeles), Literacy Links 2000 (a middle school program in Memphis), and the Crusaders, a volunteer team of exhibition basketball players from all over the country who put on benefit shows for various causes.
"We have the knowledge, technology, research, resources, and experience," he urges. "Let's turn crime, illiteracy, unhealthy, unproductive poverty lifestyles around from the ground up... One child, one community at a time - we can change the world! Let's give our children our best." Father of 11 children, ages 16 to 42, and grandfather of 16 - his ideas about what's best for our children are worth their weight in gold.
From the lessons he learned at his grandmother's side, to the wisdom that only a true king possesses, Isaac Hayes has earned his position as one of the most influential - and productive - figures in African-American culture today. His instincts as an astute businessman and unstinting philanthropist are tempered by the soul of an artist - an accomplished musician and published author, in-demand actor on-air radio personality, and one b-a-a-a-d cook in the kitchen. ISSAC....YOU WILL BE MISSED TREMENDOUSLY AND BECAUSE YOU WERE DEFINITELY ONE OF MY PRODUCTION INFLUENCES AND IM SOOO GLAD THAT I HAD A CHANCE TO MEET YOU AND LET YOU KNOW HOW MUCH YOU MEAN TO ME..I WILL MAKE SURE THAT YOU'RE LEGACY LIVES ON. REST IN PEACE BLACK MOSES !! YOU HAVE REACHED THE PROMISE LAND !
CHECK OUT THESE CLASSIC PERFORMANCES:
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Sunday, August 10, 2008
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Current mood: blessed
GREETINGS EARTHLINGS !
Welcome back to my homage series where I celebrate my musical masters & architects in the purest & honest form ! This one here is special so I'm gonna set it off like this:
That horn section, elaborate stage show, complex dynamic musical arrangements and meaningful music that WILL NEVER DIE. That's only some of the ways I can sum up the elements of music:
Earth Wind & Fire !
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Their longevity is summed up greatly by bass master Verdine White himself "From 8-tracks to the Ipods". Some of my greatest musical memories besides growing up seeing local bands attempt to play EWF songs and just being at home jamming on guitar or bass with my cousin Rasheed on drums to every EWF album from "Last Days & Time" to "Touch The World". Now I'm happy to call them real good friends of mine after spending time with them in New York this year and in 2006 where I got to watch one of my bass heroes Verdine warm up on bass and got a drum lesson from one of the most influential drummers in me and my cousin's life, Ralph Johnson. Funny thing is that most of the members had a strong influence on me from Al Mckay's strong precise guitar technique and for me vocally, Maurice's Gospel riffs were always among conversation & laughter just in amazement how his voice resonates and Phillip......that boy Phillip...I would be lying if i didn't say that this man definitely had an influence on my falsetto style of singing. I actually won a contest singing one of my favorite EWF songs he sings lead on "I'll Write a Song For You". To this day, that note that he hits on beginning of "See The Light" when he says "SEARCHIN !!!!", I WOULD JUST SIT THERE LIKE "He's not human" (LMAO)
EWF is without a doubt the first highly successful band in the Funk genre which opened the doors for other bands in this genre that commercial success with their own sounds and this wasn't by accident. From his drum playing days in Chicago as a session musician with Chess Records and more notably Ramsey Lewis, Memphis native Maurice White had a vision from the very beginning for a band with a unique fusion mix that brought Jazz, Funk, Soul and either more universal elements such as African, Brazilian and Latin music into the mix. The name of the group itself was even going against the grain as it was chosen from Maurice's astrological chart. And even more challenging, he wanted the music to have supreme spiritual value. In Pop music, EWF bridge the musical gap that often seperated black and white audiences.
"I wanted to do something that hadn't been done before," Maurice explains. "Although we were basically jazz musicians, we played soul, funk, gospel, blues, jazz, rock and dance music...which somehow ended up becoming pop. We were coming out of a decade of experimentation, mind expansion and cosmic awareness. I wanted our music to convey messages of universal love and harmony without force-feeding listeners' spiritual content."
Following a move to Los Angeles, Maurice called upon his younger brother, Verdine White - a 19 year-old classically trained bassist - to join him along with female vocalist Sherry Scott, Wade Flemons and Don Whitehead. Their initial name was The Salty Peppers before Maurice made the famous change. Their slammin ass classic self-titled 1971 debut album Earth, Wind & Fire, followed by the equally 1972's The Need of Love (both released on Warner Bros. Records). These albums include hardcore Funk-Rock workouts like "Fan Of Fire" , "Come On Children", "Energy" and my personal favorite "Bad Tune" which is the first record to feature Maurice's playing of the African instrument that would become the centerpiece of many EWF recordings, The Kalimba. The group also scored for Melvin Van Peebles' pioneering black film, Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song (on Stax) were steeped in bedrock jazz, rhythm and blues that netted the up-and-coming band a loyal but primarily black underground following. With this foundation laid and a hunger for more commercial success, Maurice exacted a bit of urban renewal on the group, switching out all of the Chicago-based members who were considered by his managers to be "very good but old jazz players". If he was trying to get the people in his age group, he needed young musicans to do it. After pulling resources from Los Angeles, California and Denver, Colorado. Among the stellar cast of new additions was a super versatile drummer-percussionist-vocalist from L.A. named Ralph Johnson, and a percussionist from Denver with an amazing four-octave vocal range named Philip Bailey who went and brought his Denver friends saxophonist Andrew Woolfolk, Keyboard wizard Larry Dunn along for the ride. Maurice's charismatic Gospel baritone voice and Philip's stratospheric falsetto set EWF's vocal identity "in the stone." Already a legend in musician circles from his stints with Ike Turner & Charlie Watts, Al Mckay joined on board with his Funk-Rock-Pop influence where as Kentucky born Guitarist Johnny Graham came from one of the most underrated Funk-Soul of all-time New Birth bringing his strong Blues-soul influence to the mix. And though their stints were brief and only on the first and second albums for Columbia Records, female vocalist Jessica Cleaves and excellent lead guitarist Roland Bautista should be recognized for their contributions as well (Roland would later return to replace good friend Al Mckay for the "Raise" and "Powerlight" albums)
With the new crew Earth, Wind & Fire made a crucial move to Columbia Records where their next three albums, Last Days and Time (1972), Head to the Sky (1973) and Open Our Eyes (1974), ushered them onto the radio with the perfect balance of stompin funk, experimental grooves and sweet soul ballads with classic jams like "Power", "Time Is Your Side", "Devotion", "Kalimba Story", "Keep Your Head To The Sky", "Evil", "Mighty Mighty", "Feelin Blue". The group put major stock in their live shows, performing in any and every club, college and theatre that would book them, typically on double bills with bands from the rock, jazz and soul arenas like their main competition: Parliament-Funkadelic. Around this time, the band paired up with famed arrranger/producer Charles Stephney who brought a whole other perspective & sophistication to the band's songwriting & musical arrangements. Phillip refers to Charles as "The dad in our group and the only one who could tell Maurice to shut-up". A broader demographic within their underground following began to amass, but it was the soundtrack to an ill-fated film that broke EWF wide open. That's the Way of the World (1975) was a stiff at the box office (twice), but Earth Wind & Fire's galvanizing 8-song opus was a sales and cultural phenomenon. The group earned its first 1 single ("Shining Star"), first Grammy Award and first double platinum sales award from that now-classic album which also featured the classic title track, "See the Light", "Happy Feelin" and the ultimate and often misunderstood love ballad "Reasons". Around this time, Maurice & Verdine's younger brother Fred who was also an accomplished drummer joined the fold and later became the only stage drummer as Ralph settled upon more percussion and vocal duties. Fred's basic pocket groove approach resulted in him playing on various sessions that included The Emotions & former Stevie Wonder background singer, Deniece Williams.
Gratitude (a half live/half studio double album released just in time for Christmas 1975) and is considered to be an extreme classic for die hard EWF fans and also the most imitated such as the live version of "Reasons". The Spirit (1976) and All 'n All (1977) albums cemented Earth, Wind & Fire's status as superstars and also showed Maurice's spiritual awareness and fascination with Egyptology and Mysticism as evidenced with the now famous album covers featuring pyramids and artifacts of these cultures. After a trip to Brazil, the band was heavily influenced by the music they heard and images itself became their identity down the line as well as the African inspired wardrobe. Classic hit singles & obscure radio jams began to flow: "Can't Hide Love,", "Saturday Nite" , "On Your Face", "Getaway," "Serpentine Fire", "Jupiter" , The Grammy winning instrumental "Runnin", "Love's Holiday", "Fantasy" and the most unlikely interlude song to become a club favorite "Brazillian Rhyme" a song that makes people in the club go crazy and sing a long to this very day. Then there was "Got to Get You Into My Life," their thrilling R&B arrangement of the Beatles' classic from the otherwise all-star rock film odyssey Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band that expanded their audience even further. Relentless international touring followed. The pace was so frenetic that band members found themselves composing during sound checks and in hotel rooms, even recording on precious off-days. "The Fire" was blazing hot by then, even scoring a smash with "September," one of two new songs included on their first greatest hits set, The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire (a quadruple platinum seller). It wasn't for nothing that this 1978 compilation was subtitled Volume I.
Of course, any well-rounded musicologist knows that there is nothing...nothing...like an Earth, Wind & Fire concert. Along with Maurice, Verdine is often the mastermind behind-the-scenes live, and is arguably in possession of the most energetic stage presence of any performer on the planet! Just as "The Fire" vowed to go where no other band had gone before on records, they hired magician Doug Henning and his then-unknown assistant David Copperfield to design their bedazzling stage shows. Band members levitated, soared and disappeared, later to emerge from Egyptian pyramids and space crafts. Meanwhile, drum sets and synthesizer banks flipped upside down, and Maurice battled "The Force" with a light saber while scores of whirling lights and lasers winked in sync. With precision and panache, Earth, Wind & Fire and their legendary Phenix Horns (which also featured the late greats saxaphonist Don Myrick and Trombonist Louis SatterField who was also Verdine's bass teacher in Chicago when he first started and often played background bass during Verdine's high octane bass solos) section high-stepped through some seriously athletic choreography, never missing a lick on their instruments. "It was like Carnival, Mardi Gras, Broadway, Vegas and Cirque du Soleil all at once," Verdine proudly exclaims.
Like many so other groups, The group was ultimately forced to cash in on the growing Disco movement in the late 70's which was totally beneath what they stood for as a group and many EWF purists will tell you that that's went it kind of went artistically downhill but nevertheless, The hits kept on coming with one of my ultimate favorite EWF albums - I Am (1979) album which Verdine refers to as "Our Abbey Road" with classic jams like "In the Stone" , "Boogie Wonderland", "Can't Let Go", "After The Love Has Gone" and one of my favorites "Let Your Feelings Show". The double album Faces (1980) - the last to include Al Mckay and also the first EWF didn't sell a million but still had great songs like 'Let Me Talk" and "Pride".
By this time, EWF were no longer to be considered the groundbreaking group that they were especially with high charting Pop/R&B singles like the classic "Let's Groove" from the classic Raise! (1981) album which did feature some great songs like "My Love", "You're a Winner", "I've Had Enough" and the grammy-winning "I Wanna Be With You" and the Gold selling Powerlight (1982) which featured more classic jams like "Fall In Love With Me" , "Something Special", "The Speed Of Love" & "Side By Side". As if THAT weren't enough, Maurice White (in a divine partnership with the late, legendary orchestrating genius, Charles Stepney) produced major hits by Ramsey Lewis ("Sun Goddess"), Deniece Williams ("Free") and The Emotions ("Best of My Love"), all of whom also opened for Earth, Wind & Fire on tour. After the disappointing rushed "Electric Universe" album, the band took a serious hiatus for a few years while Phillip and Maurice released solo albums. Phillip scored a huge hit with Phil Collins on "Easy Lover" while Ralph and ex-member Al Mckay produced the Temptations last huge hit "Treat Her Like A Lady". The band returned in 1987 pairing down to five members (Maurice, Phillip, Andrew, Ralph & Verdine) for the 1987's Platinum "Touch The World". Other key members added to the fold was drummer Sonny Emroy and veteran guitarist/vocalist Sheldon Reynolds who was known for his work with The Commodores and many other artists. The album produced two top R&B hits, The 1 "System Of Survival" & top 10 "Thinking Of You".
While there was a little spark of that old school magic, EWF purists didn't fully digest the band's new synthesized approach to the music and their last album for Columbia "Heritage" suffered greatly in the sales department despite having a few gems. Two years later, The group found themselves back at Warner Brothers under the Reprise division with the album "Millenium" which some songs featured EWF in top live musicianship form like "Honor The Magic", "I Wouldn't Change A Thing About You" and the grammy-nominated "Sunday Morning". The tour for the album was huge bringing them back around the world playing for the legions of multi-cultural fans. It was also bittersweet because this would also be the last tour for Maurice. Although it wouldn't be made public until a few years later, Maurice was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. But Maurice is still part of the group behind the scenes singing, producing & arranging and every now and then, makes the usual guest appearance alongside his boys. In 2000, The Rock n Roll Hall Of Fame inducted the elements and it was the first time in 14 years that all the original members performed on stage together. These days, Ralph, Verdine & Phillip along with new recruits like David Whitworth, Jon Paris continue to hold the fort on stage.
The music and showmanship of Earth, Wind & Fire remains a natural for traditional media and new media alike. VH1, HBO and the Arts & Entertainment Network have all aired top rated concert performances with A&E releasing its 1999 Live By Request program on DVD. The Eagle Vision video company released the EWF documentary Shining Stars, which contains rarely seen historic video footage along with in-depth interviews with the band members. As always, EWF continues to appear on numerous network television shows from "Oprah" to "Leno." And Hollywood as well as the hip-hop artists who samples their music continues to have a love affair with their mass appealing music, commissioning new Earth, Wind & Fire music for films such as Roll, Bounce ("Love Together"), Robots ("Love's Dance") and Hitch, ("This is How I Feel"), as well as tapping their classics for films such as Be Cool ("Fantasy"), Soul Food ("September") and Muppets in Outer Space ("Shining Star"). Even the commericial game has been good to them with their songs being featured in MANY commericals especially around the time of their 2006 classic album"Illumination" which was not only nominated for grammys but also critically acclaimed by fans for it's return to their true classic sound & form collaborating with Will.I.AM, Outkast, Raphael Saadiq and even Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. Then there are the NBC Ice Capades specials, Target commercials and even a musical called "Hot Feet" that celebrated and featured the music of EWF. When I went to see this play myself, It made me realize the power and magic of one of the greatest, untouchable forces in the music history and as I witnessed at a recent concert in NYC at Radio City Music Hall, after 37 years in the game, ITS FAR FROM OVER !!
L*A*W SALUTES YALL !!
WATCH THESE CLASSIC LIVE PERFORMANCES FROM EWF:
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Tuesday, July 29, 2008
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Current mood: thankful
Category: Music
Greetings Earthlings
Welcome back to my homage blog series where we hold our architects and masters in high respect. I'm gonna start this one off with a simple phrase: LENNY KRAVITZ IS THE F****** MAN !
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Let me just say that I feel that me and Lenny are brothers from another mother because we have too much in common. We are both from the hood in Brooklyn, we play more than one instrument, both belong to famous families, love God tremendously and lastly, we are black artists that do not compromise and stay true to who we are. One of MANY reasons why I love this dude 4 life !
Although Prince & later, Living Colour opened the doors for the Black Rock genre to sell millions, In the mid 80's, There was not much room for black artists who embraced Rock and Rock had only become associated with just white artists so unless you were Prince, you were ridiculed or made fun of for doing or appreciating Rock which I ALLLWAYS thought was stupid on the part of my own people because they forget that WE INVENTED ROCK N ROLL !! Chuck Berry, Little Richard and 90% of the Blues legends are the reasons why Rock n Roll was born. Legendary black bands of this genre like Bad Brains & Fishbone were critically acclaimed in the early 80's but never had the commercial exposure of the white bands that they influenced like No Doubt & Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Somewhere in 1989, this dreadlock dude who was mostly known as Romeo Blue and just happened to be dating one of the sexiest actresses in TV history Lisa Bonet came out under his real name Lenny Kravitz with an album called "Let Love Rule". Though most critics dismissed him in the beginning as a 1960's hippie reject or a severe Beatles/Jimi Hendrix junkie, real music lovers including me were hooked on Lenny from the opening bars of the first song 'Sitting On Top Of The World" to the raw funk-rock of 'Freedom Train". This album is truly one of the greatest albums to fuse Funk/Rock/Soul/ Blues and even Folk unapologetically psychedelic AND he played all the instruments on most of the songs which reminded of another dude besides myself but from Minneapolis (you already know who that is). Lenny really connected with me on the song "Mr Cab Driver" because any black man from New York can tell you about the racism & prejudice that we've experienced while trying to get transportation. I've been a true Lenny Kravitz fan supporter ever since the purchase of that album when most black folks wasn't feeling him & other critics were hating him. I even had the pleasure of meeting his mom a few times in Brooklyn and then again in California and often told her to tell her son that there are young black kids like myself that are listening and following the example he's setting (Lenny use to often express in interviews how he wish he saw more blacks at his shows)When the real success hit for him with "Are You Gonna My Way" and people were starting to jump the bandwagon, me and my boys were like "Yall late - we've been up on this dude from the beginning". Matter fact, lets's go there
Born in New York on May 26, 1964 (his mother was actress Roxie Roker, best-known for her role as Helen Willis on the popular TV series The Jeffersons, and his father was a TV producer). The classic story behind her getting the role for this tv show is that the casting people loved her acting but wasn't sure if Roxie would be comfortable being the wife of a white man. Roxie went into her purse and said this is my husband, who just happened to be Jewish TV producer Sy Kravitz. Immediately, they said "You got the part !" Because of his mom landing the role, Kravitz was raised in Los Angeles where he found himself around countless musical giants as a youngster due to his parents friendships with the likes of Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Short, and Miles Davis. Kravitz was a member of the California Boys Choir until his teenage years, when he decided to pursue rock & roll while in high school and under the heavily influence of the funk-rock Minneapolis sound that was spearheaded by Prince. Kravitz's admiration of the Purple One was so great that he at first patterned his style and approach directly after Prince and became known as "Romeo Blue" (complete with blue contact lenses), but failed to land a recording contract and was often met with ridiculous demands. Lenny later moves out of his parent's home with no plans for college and even staying with friends & sleeping in his car to make his dreams of getting a record deal come true. "The companies would put the contract in my face and say, we will sign if you do this or do that. I was also told that I wasn't black enough or white enough and that I should change my sound". In true rebel spirit, Lenny refused to give in (Didn't I tell you me and this guy had a lot in common)
In the late '80s, Kravitz relocated back to New York City to start working on an album with money that his father had given him, where one of his roommates turned out to be actress Lisa Bonet (who played the part of Denise Huxtable on The Cosby Show); they eventually got married and as Lenny would say, the songs for his soon to be debut album came flowing out him. During this time, Kravitz wisely discarded his Prince-like approach and looked back to such '60s/'70s classic rockers as Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, Bob Marley, and the Beatles for inspiration. Kravitz found a kindred spirit in engineer Henry Hirsch (who would stick by Kravitz throughout his career). With a back-to-basics approach, his style was quite refreshing in the humorously gaudy late '80s. He inked a recording contract with Virgin Records and issued his debut release, "Let Love Rule" in 1989. Kravitz's debut proved to be a surprise hit due to the success of the title track, which became a hit single and oft-aired video mostly in Europe. A few critics were quick to assume that Kravitz's retro look and sound were simply a shtick to get the public's attention and often called him names as well as focus on his image more than the message. He was even accused of lifting riffs and ridiculed for wearing his musical influences heavily on his own original compositions. But come the '90s, it had become integrated into the mainstream (both musically and fashion-wise), proving that Kravitz was a bit of a trendsetter. It was around this time that Kravitz penned a major hit single, not for himself but for Madonna, who went to number one with the sultry track "Justify My Love."
What should have been a time of happiness for Kravitz quickly turned sour as he and Bonet divorced by the early '90s. Kravitz's heartbreak was very evident in his sophomore effort, "Mama Said", which was even stronger & harder than its predecessor, highlighted by the Led Zep-like funk rocker "Always on the Run" (a collaboration with Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash, as well as the mega hit with the Curtis Mayfield-esque soul ballad "It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over," in addition was jams like "Stop Draggin Around", "What Goes Around Comes Around" and the bluesy "Til The Morning Comes To Light" which confirmed that Kravitz's success was no fluke. But the best was yet to come for Kravitz. His third release overall, 1993's "Are You Gonna Go My Way", is often considered to be the finest album front to back of his entire career, and with good reason: Every single song was a winner like "Is There Any Love In Your Heart", "Come On & Love Me", "Black Girl", "Sugar" and of course, the up-tempo anthemic title track, which turned out to be one of MTV's most played videos for that year. The album was a massive hit and Kravitz became an arena headliner stateside, as well as being featured on countless magazine covers and dating some of the hottest women in the biz like Nicole Kidman made for good conversation too.
Despite an almost two-year gap between albums, Kravitz's fourth release and as he calls it "Weird record" ,"Circus" came off sounding dark and moody BUT definitely with strong rockin gems like "Rock N Roll Is Dead" , "Tunnel Vision", "Can't Get You Off Of My Mind". Though it was huge internationally, some american fans didn't really know what to make of it but they also didn't know that Lenny was going through a lot on the personal end with his mom fighting cancer, a battle that she lost as Lenny wrapped up his tour for the album. Perhaps sensing that he needed to stir things up musically, Kravitz dabbled with electronics, trip-hop loops combing with his vintage sound for his next album, 1998's "5". Although not a huge hit right off the bat, the album is easily Lenny's best work among many of his fans and even critics , spawning the biggest hit of Kravitz's career, "Fly Away". This album features other slamming gems like "I Belong To You", "Thinking Of You", "Live", "Black Velveteen", "You're my Flavor". With the success of "Fly Away", Virgin decided to cash in on the album's sudden rebirth by reissuing it around the same time with a pair of extra added bonus tracks, one of which became another sizeable hit single, a remake of the Guess Who's "American Woman" (which was used in the hit 1999 comedy movie Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me). Let me also point out that Lenny made history by being the first Black artist to win three consecutive Grammys in the same category: "Fly Away" ,"American Woman" and "Again" - the only new song on his greatest hits package released during his two year break
His sixth studio release, the heavily underrated "Lenny" , was issued a year later. The somewhat disappointing "Baptism" album followed in 2004 with a couple of gems "Where are we running" & "California". After starting a residential, commercial, and product design company called Kravitz Design, he recorded a funky version of John Lennon's "Cold Turkey" for Amnesty International's 2007 benefit compilation Instant Karma. Before the end of the year it was announced that Kravitz would return in 2008 with a new album, It Is Time for a Love Revolution. There is also a talk of the long awaited "Funk" album (AND BOY...AM I WAITING FOR THAT ONE)
Lenny Kravitz is a true testament to the African-American legacy of Rock music. His music is just as universal as his message of love, peace & tolerance. Rock on Lenny ! - L*A*W SALUTES YOU AND PRAYS THAT WE GET TO WORK TOGETHER !!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVNU_hO2yCk&feature=related (ALWAYS ON THE RUN)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykH2VoRv7cI&feature=related (CIRCUS)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_dnWWnKCTk&feature=related (ARE YOU GONNA GO MY WAY ?)
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Monday, July 14, 2008
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Current mood:  excited
Category: Music
GREETINGS EARTHLINGS
Welcome to the revisted version of the debut of my honors series. Because of the tremendous lack of respect for architects in this music biz, a real artist like myself has decided to take matters on his hands to pay serious homage to the artists that influenced my sound and many others. I will not wait until i get a hit record for my fans to know who I listened to to help shape my sound. Yall will learn how they changed the game and set standards and with that being said, the first one is up is one of the most musically gifted, talented and sometimes overlooked families in the R&b/Pop/Soul/Funk realm - The Debarge Family. As kids, me and my brothers and cousins would sit at the record player for hours trying to learn all the harmony parts to "Love me in a special way" , "I Like it", "Dance the night away" ," What's your name" and especially "Stay with me" (that was the hardest...The harmonies on that s*** was serious) but somewhere between El Debarge's fender rhodes playing and ill chord changes and the harmonies between him, Randy, Mark, James and Bunny - the sister and only girl in the group holding it down, it was easy to get lost in it and seeing them perform on American Bandstand, Motown 25 and that classic Soul Train performance when they sang acapella to silence the haters that didn't think they were really singing on those records....I'm sure those critics felt real stupid afterwards
Family groups have always played a vital role in music and some of the best ones left legacies that can't denied such as The Five Stairsteps (remember "Ooh Child" - we will learn more about them later down the line), The Osmonds, The Sylvers, The Bee Gees and of course, The Jacksons. But in the early 80's, a family group out of Grand Rapids, Michigan would smoothly come in the game and leave their mark with their incredible unforgettable songwriting, eclectic fashion taste and those complex harmonies: The Debarge family
The Debarge family is made up 10 children who were raised in church by their beautifully Gospel singing mother Etterlene and their minister father and musically rooted in Gospel and Jazz training. The interesting part is that most of them played at least 2-3 instruments fluently. Now true Funk/R&b heads know where the story begins and that's with a group called Switch that was ironically discovered by the multi-talented Jermaine Jackson and signed to Motown Records. This heavily underrated and severely multi-talented group was led by the older Debarge siblings Tommy (bass and one of many reasons why i chose Fender basses) and the late Bobby Debarge (keyboards, drums and lead vocals) - it also included James Ingram's younger brother Phillip Ingram. They recorded 4 albums and total and though they never scored heavy on the Pop charts, their songs "They'll Never Be" and "I Call Your Name" are bonafied classics that still get regular rotation & crazy crowd reaction. If you listen closely to these records, you will hear the seeds of that famous Debarge falsetto smooth/funk sound being planted and you can definitely tell who their younger siblings were studying and learning it from
As Switch was winding down by 1980, Bobby began to focus on working with his younger brothers and sisters with the intention of bringing them to Motown. Then there's that classic story of how Bobby got his family to audition for Jermaine Jackson without them knowing The result was the breakthrough of The Debarges - Mark, Randy, sister Bunny and of course, Eldra (El for short) who would become one of the quintessential lead singers of the 80's R&B group movement. Their heavily underrated first album didn't make any marks but showed the Debarge family magic and what was to come. The unique thing about this Debarge collective is that every last one of them can sing lead, play an instrument and write their asses off and this first album shows this. Their harmonies were so weaved and locked in that it was hard to tell who sang high first tenor because they all can sing. It also didn't hurt that their other brother James was asked to join the group and though he's mostly known for his brief marriage to Janet Jackson, you can hear his vocal prowess and songwriting ability on songs like "Be My Lady" , "Need Somebody" (my favorite of his), "I Give Up On You" both written with and arranged by the late great Billy Preston.
Things finally broke through with their classic second album "All This Love" which featured the unforgettable title song and one of the most memorable, sampled and quoted songs in R&B "I Like it". The song is led by Randy and El and though every part of the song was excellent - it was the funky bridge that would become an eternal coin phrase in urban music & society "I like the way you comb your hair / I like the stylish clothes you wear / it's just the little things you do / that shows how much you really care" - the memories (lol)
Now finally convincing Motown that they were capable of making major things happen, the company decided to move full speed and push for the release of yet another classic album with timeless, classic songs called "In a Special Way" - once again, Debarge crafted songs (mostly written by El) that would influence the next generation. In addition to classics cuts like "Queen Of my Heart" and the often covered "Love Me In a Special Way", Their song "Stay with Me" is familiar to hip-hop heads who loved The Notorious B.I.G's "One More Chance" because it sampled it. His rival 2 Pac was also a Debarge fan. For his song " I Aint Mad At Cha" , he sampled Bunny Debarge's ballad masterpiece "A Dream" which features one of the greatest keyboard-piano lines of all time and gives Bunny the spotlight in midst of her brothers. This song was also sampled by Blackstreet for "Don't Leave Me Girl" and just recently, Rich Boy's hit "Throw Some D's" sampled Switch's "I Call Your Name" and Mariah Carey's latest single samples "Stay With Me" cementing the Debarge legacy even further.
The "In A Special Way" album cover also showed Debarge family getting with the times trading in their more normal look for 1980's wild hair and abstract fashion. Their album covers and looks have always been a heated topic and the fact that Prince was somewhat of the black leader of this 80's androgynous movement didn't make it no better but like I always tell people - that was the time and back then, you had to go along with it or be lost and because i'm a musician, I UNDERSTOOD FROM THE GATE. It gave people the perception that these guys were very campy and cheesy because they weren't afraid to smile heavy and moose their hair. But as many fans like myself know - it was all just image at the end of the day especially when stories of drug and alcohol abuse, fist-fights/squabbles started to surface in the industry. It was then and later realized that The Debarge family was the total opposite of what their public image gave off which made them even more intriguing to the public.
With that being said, Their fourth and sadly their last album for the classic line-up also became their biggest pop achievement "Rhythm Of The Night". The signs of conflict were so evident with the first example being that they were only three songs written by Debarge - one being a funky classic joint called "You Wear It Well" written by El and the youngest brother Chico (we'll get to him in a minute). Their biggest Pop hits were "Who's Holding Donna Now" - which was credited as El Debarge featuring Debarge adding insult to injury and of course, the Diane Warren penned "Rhythm Of The Night - the song that became their calling card and featured in the movie "The Last Dragon". And another great gem and my favorite song from this album is "Give It Up" in which debuts Mark singing lead showing off his silky r&b/pop vocal style. It was supposed to be a sign of things to come now that the group was making the mainstream take notice to their group & individual talents.
But just as the endorsements for Coke, tv specials and sitcom appearances were starting to roll in, Debarge was caught in the all-too familiar record company plot. Even though El was always noted as the lead singer, Motown decided to further expand on that idea and it was obvious from the way his photo on the "Rhythm" cover was larger than the other members. In addition to James Debarge's marriage/divorce to Janet
Jackson making headlines, members began missing rehearsals and sometimes missing even shows due to internal conflict which was usually spearheaded by some of the members dependency on drugs. It was clear that Debarge as a group was no more and It was never officially announced but it sure didn't stop the name from being heard.
In 1985, El began his solo career with the cheesy pop single "Who's Johnny" and released a few more albums like 1989's "Gemini" which featured two classic jams "Real Love" & my favorite "Somebody Loves You" and then appeared on one of the greatest slow jams of all time in 1990- Quincy Jones "The Secret Garden". But truthfully, his greatest solo album and my all-time favorite album was the mostly Babyface-produced, "Heart, Mind & Soul" - i tremendously love this album and it stays in my travel case and if you listen closely to the songs, you will hear Bunny, James and Randy singing background on several tracks showing that classic Debarge harmony- i strongly recommend this out of print album. Speaking of which, let me also point out the fact that Bunny Debarge also put out a verrry exceptional solo album in 1986 called "In Love" with the top 20 hit "Save the best for me". Bunny's personal struggles and industry experiences can be heard in her powerful testimony as she has redirected her path going back to her Gospel roots. Go to www.myspace.com/bunnydebarge and you will clearly hear that this woman still sounds amazing. I also heard that some of the other Debarge members have also been working on Gospel projects.
Younger brother Chico Debarge made his debut with his hit single "Talk To Me" in 1985-1986 which showed that Motown was really set on making the Debarge name an even bigger brand. But even then, Chico definitely developed a different thing from his siblings focusing more on the family's taste for funk. But his early rise to success was cut short when him and older brother Bobby from Switch was arrested and sentenced to six years in prison based on drug trafficking charges. Sadly, Bobby, who was in the process of performing and recording again died upon his release - the last testament of Bobby's genius can be heard in the post-Debarge album without El and Bunny called "Bad Boys" - THIS ALBUM IS TRULY AN OVERLOOKED GEM. In 1996, Chico resurfaced back on the scene just in time for the Neo-soul movement releasing two critically acclaimed albums "Long Time No See" and my favorite "The Game"
Lastly, i was delighted as many other folks when the original Debarge minus Bunny reunited one last time for SInbad's 70's funk festival and tour the house down playing in 1997 with that classic clip of them doing their late brother Bobby's classic "I Call Your Name" and El overwhelmed by grief left the stage early and I UNDERSTOOD THAT TOO. There is no doubt in my mind if they were to do it again, every show would be sold-out simply because the Debarge sound has stood the test of time and still continues to as their songs get regular rotation on radio. El and Chico's shows especially in New York together have become legendary. Everyone from Babyface to Teddy Riley and yes, especially me have studied and implemented the Debarge blueprint in their sounds. A lot of my harmonies and keyboard chord structures are definitely Debarge derivited - just listen to my song ' The Description" and you'll see what i mean. The Debarge name will continue to live on as i have discovered on My Space there are many Debarge children including the sons of Bobby and El as well as the daughters of James and Randy and they are all making music keeping that tradition and sound alive . To every last member of the family that's doing so and even the ones who are not doing music, rock on and on, keep God first and uphold the family tradition - I'm lovin it and you better believe that I will always have your back ! Debarge 4 life !
TO VISUALIZE THIS FAMILY IN ACTION - HERE'S THE L*A*W TIME MACHINE TAKING YOU ALL THE WAY BACK FROM THE SWITCH YEARS TO THE PRESENT TIMES, CHECK OUT DEBARGE IN ACTION:
(SWITCH - THERE WILL NEVER BE)
(EL DEBARGE ON ARSENIO HALL SHOW WITH RANDY, BUNNY & TOMMY)
(DEBARGE REUNION IN 1999: MARK, JAMES, RANDY & EL)
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Monday, July 14, 2008
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Current mood: rejuvenated
Category: Music
L*A*W : THE MAN, THE MUSIC AND THAT DAMN CONTROVERSIAL TITLE !!!!
By Mark Wilson
Since debuting strong April of 2006 on My Space, multi-talented artist L*A*W has been causing quite a musical riot making his presence known in not 1, but 5 different genres of music on the mp3 unsigned charts. While on the popular website, he had over 10 songs in either top 5, top 10 or top 20 with versatility ranging from banging Hip-Hop tracks to heavy Funk-Soul and to sincere Country-Pop. But no success comes too easy. L*A*W's self-proclaimed "The Most Talented Kid in the Music Biz" title has caused quite a stir leaving a few folks to assume that he has an extreme ego and quite arrogant. L*A*W states his case, "At the end of the day, it's just a persona I made to fit my identity. Right now, there is nobody out there like me on the market. All the greats from James Brown to Michael Jackson have all self-proclaimed their titles and for good reason because they knew what they had to offer. To me, saying "i'm the best" or "i'm the king of whatever" is corny to me. I came up with something that represents me and until they can find someone who can sing, rap, produce, write songs, dance and play 7 instruments, it is what is and i make no apologies for it !!! mom's advice: if you don't determine your worth, others will do it for you". he also says that the My Space world and Mp3 Unsigned.com has proven that his songs were that good when he recorded. "Some of the ones you hear are damn 2 years old and some companies told me that they weren't strong enough to be hits - well 14,000 and counting can't be wrong which means I must be doing something right !!". With L*A*W's growing track record, that negative theory and judgement has been destroyed thanks to the fans and peers alike.
To understand L*A*W's diversity is to understand his upbringing in the rough streets of Crown Heights in Brooklyn, a badge of honor that he wears proudly. "I have nothing but fond memories growing up raw in the hood", says L*A*W. "It gave me my swagger, my street credibility and i did it all without becoming a victim to the negative pitfalls". The main part of L*A*W's resistance to these pitfalls was the fact that he comes from one of the heaviest family legacies in music history.
For the sake of this article, we will focus on the main 4 : Gospel legend Professor Charles Taylor (uncle), 13 time Apollo Theatre winner Bobby Taylor (uncle)(his mom Sandra Taylor is also a veteran of the New York club scene and 1st place Apollo winner as well) and last but not certainly not least, his granddad is Sam "Bluzman" Taylor - Blues hall of fame inductee, prolific songwriter with a massive roster of clients and original member of Joey Dee & The Starlighters. Ironically, "My family was my school for music because everybody had a niche which is how i came to discover different kinds of styles and sounds", says L*A*W. "my cousin Showbiz introduced me to the world of hip-hop, mom made sure that Sly & The Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Prince & Chaka Khan stayed in my ear and granddad gave me the basic foundation: Blues and early Rock n Roll with everyone from Albert King to Chuck Berry. But it was Bobby who took time out of his growing stardom to teach L*A*W the fundamentals of the stage and how to command it with aggressive. "Bobby taught me almost everything about delivery and performing to how to hold a mic". Bobby's teaching helped L*A*W to win the school talent show performing New Edition's "Lost In Love" at 9 years-old. By age 10, L*A*W was already doing shows performing James Brown, Michael Jackson and Prince songs in NYC parks. At home, he had an extreme appetite for music. For hours, he studied harmonies and the dance moves of groups like Jackson 5, The Temptations, Morris Day & The Time and his favorite of the bunch, New Edition. In addition, he practiced several instruments including drums, guitar and piano and later bass to every record ranging from Rick James, Stevie Wonder & the artist who influenced him the most, Prince. L*A*W was dubbed the "walking music encyclopedia" because of his vast knowledge of every artist, song, style of nearly every genre of music. "His ability to hear a song and all its parts is uncanny. He would know all the harmony parts, lines and structure as well as play em. He knows more about my history than me sometimes" , laughs Sam Taylor.
The one relative that would elevate L*A*W's teenage musical development was Uncle Tony "T-Funk" Alston, who was one of the most talked-about and sought after drummers in NYC and was known for his brief stints with Kool & The Gang and James Brown. His wife, Delores Tate-Alston is also a veteran vocalist who worked with legendary Funk-R&b group Brass Construction and had two number 1 records with Funk Deluxe. "When they got married, they stayed with us for awhile", L*A*W recalls." Tony had these three crates of records ranging from Chicago, Earth, Wind & Fire to The Commmodores and K.C and the Sunshine Band. The funk bug bit me real hard and i haven't been the same since".
By age 12, L*A*W was in Tuscon, Arizona playing and singing with his granddad and uncle Bobby as a professional. By the 1990's, L*A*W was seriously honing his skills as a rapper, singer, musician and getting even deeper into other forms of music such as The Beatles, The Who, Cream and mostly, The P-Funk dynasty (Parliament-Funkadelic) whose visionary leader George Clinton along with Beatles producer George Martin inspired him to become immersed in production and concept writing. "After hearing the "Mothership Connection" album, I was officially hooked and locked in on the mothership. George showed me that i needed to be different from everyone else because he was which is what makes him an icon", says L*A*W. Thus, the Planet 12 concept was born. He said that he wanted expand the hip-hop forum by adding Funk, Rock & even Country elements the same way P-Funk did to the R&B landscape. "Everyone else in rap was into Jazz sampling at the time which wasn't a bad thing at all. But I wanted to be different by bringing band dynamics and raw funk musicianship. The outer space thing was my love for science-fiction novels and t.v. That was used to get your attention". In 1994, L*A*W and high school friends formed The Bionic Iddiotz (title was named after a George Clinton phrase). Although it was short-lived, they did manage to rip a few shows and L*A*W fully developed his mission and sound predating groups like the Fugees, The Roots & Outkast. "When those guys came out, we were in heaven because up until then, we felt we were the only ones bold enough to take music to that next level. it just made our thing even more acceptable".
Unfortunately, L*A*W also discovered the shadiness and the sometimes cold-hearted nature of the business which prevented him from becoming a vicitm but also leading to delayed success. "fake people selling dreams. some a&r's who don't know about music but wants to change you and managers who give up on you when some labels don't see the vision. I added all these things up and got smarter. That scared executives at meetings because they realized they couldn't play me", said L*A*W. Although the group fell apart, L*A*W and his DJ Kalethal Weapon continued to record and shop for a deal although they were often met with a brickwall of "bulls---- excuses".
The great part was that L*A*W's reputation as a live performer made him a local celebrity. As a rapper/singer & choreographer, He played with his uncle Tony's band Eturnity on weekends doing weddings or tearing down clubs like Lola's and Le Bar Bat. "Great money and women wanting to go home with you and you don't even have a record out: that's star power!!" recalls L*A*W. "We created a blueprint that other bands followed especially when it came to the musical dynamics created by my uncle & the choreography that me, and my boys Errol Hibbert & Mike Green created.....WE THOUGHT WE WERE NEW EDITION" laughs L*A*W.
He even racked up additional achievements by being the first urban act and to perform three times at the Songwriters Hall Of Fame showcase.The last performance earned L*A*W a publishing deal with SESAC. But it was L*A*W's moonlighting at clubs to see and sometimes hang if not perform for or with icons like Rick James, Morris Day, Larry Graham, Freddie Jackson, Harry Connick Jr, and Chaka Khan that would lead him to a golden opportunity. L*A*W became the lead singer of Enemy Squad which was an offshoot P-Funk group. When the group was on hiatus, he went to Atlanta to work on some music and ended playing with his hero George Clinton. "I was already in my glory just doing that", says L*A*W. A mutual friend of both artists played George L*A*W's demo on the way back to his hotel. The next morning, George summoned L*A*W to come to Florida and work in his studio on some tracks for him and his granddaughter Sativa giving L*A*W his first major production job. Things really took off from there.
In 2002, George and his people granted even more favor when L*A*W became the lead singer of The 420 Funkmob alongisde P-Funk luminaries Michael Hampton, Garry Shider, Billy "Bass" Nelson, Lige Curry & Michael "Clip" Payne which is a position he still holds. In late 2006, An Impromptu fill-in gig with key members of NYC's The Dap-Kings led him to be called to do background vocals for a new female britsh artist that they were going to be playing behind. Before you can say "NO NO NO", Millions saw him on David Letterman in his kangol glory singing behind british sensation Amy Winehouse as well as open for her sold-out shows in New York City with his own red-hot 7-piece band, The Funk Auxillary Unit. Then after hearing L*A*W's highly anitcipated album through word of mouth of her husband and management, Amy asked him to join her on the 2007 MTV Movie Awards. This move led to L*A*W to expand his diveristy into films and television with his song "GET DOWN" which was recently featured in the season premiere episode of the Oxygen network hit reality show "The Bad Girls Club", Showtime series "The L Word" and co-wrote & produced the song "I'M A LADY" by Karmela which is now being featured on MTV's "Making The Band 4". And as if that wasn't enough, his hot anthem "GET HOLLYWOOD ON EM" is featured in the season premiere of MTV's "The Real World: Hollywood" only to be eclipsed by his participation on the upcoming Prince tribute album in which he was handpicked personally by The Revolution's legendary keyboardist Dr Fink for his red-hot version of the Prince classic "America"
L*A*W has also recorded songs will be featured on a Jazz project with legendary Jazz basisst John Patitucci serving as one of the producer/writers for a 15 year-old trumpet prodigy named Liam which will be released before the year is out. L*A*W also co-wrote those three tracks as well at the same time beginning to make his mark as a solid in-producer/arranger/songwriter for hot new acts like Karmela, Renee Marino, Jafunk, Carlton J. Smith, Maxi B of The Mary Jane Girls
With L*A*W having his plate full going in the coming months, it won't be long until the rest of the industry recognizes possibly the next musical meteor to hit the scene hard and change things in the process. "I have nothing but faith and talent working for me and I plan to succeed at any cost. There is a rainbow at the end of the tunnel and it has a 12 on it", laughs L*A*W.
Mark Wilson
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Monday, July 14, 2008
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Current mood: rebellious
Category: Music
GREETINGS EARTHLINGS
I'm back with another state of address and we are not gonna waste no time - pay attention as i speak on the state of Hip-hop
30 years ago, they said it was a passing fad, turntables weren't instruments and because we couldn't afford to go into the lavish disco clubs of the 1970s, we forced to start what is now called the block party. As you can see, Rap and Hip-hop is still here and still the most influential music genre on today's youth. It was events like the sampling of the funk (R.I.P James Brown and long live George Clinton) and Run-Dmc's love affair with Rock guitars showing the similiar rebellious nature of both genres that made this music recognizable to the world and changed some of the minds of narrow minded older black folks who saw it as just noise and scared-ass conservative white folks who wouldnt go near it.
One of my favorite rappers Nas made an excellent and controversial album called 'Hip-Hop Is Dead" and of course, many people have come to me and asked me do i agree ? here is the truth folks so brace yourself: the commercialism of rap/hip-hop will never die simply because it has gotten to a point where the industry can't survive without our influence on mainstream culture which the way IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN since Little Richard and Chuck Berry invented Rock music and the sounds of Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf and B.B King influenced the major Rock groups of the 60's and 70's who wrote thei own chapters. HOWEVER - the true roots of lyricism, originality, concept and versatility are no more with the exception of a few artists who refuse to be anything else but themselves. Now here are the blame factors
1) wack ass a&r's who know nothing about music/vision and some radio programmers who are narrow-minded in their thinking of what listeners may wanna listen to by forcefeeding music through all available mediums. there was a time when female rappers were big but nowadays, it's damn near extinct so bad that the grammys took out all the female catergories which totally makes rap boring and takes the diversity out if you ask me
2) rappers who are afraid to be themselves and allow others to lead them into portraying a role just so they can make money and be famous- old saying goes: if you don't stand for something, you fall for anything
3) NO UNITY - the new thing now is that every east coast rapper wants to blame the recent south explosion for what's wrong with hip-hop - GARBAGE ! - have you ever stop to think that they wasn't feeling like that when the east coast was on top ? here is the real: the east coast used to diss the south and west coast regions back in the 80's and 90's and it took excellent, trend setting groups who i love like Outkast, Eightball and MJG, Ludacris, U.G.K, Too Short, N.W.A, Cash money/No Limit families, E-40 and the Geto Boys to put their areas on map and to keep rap from becoming a one-side affair. But i will say that because of oversaturated promotion of the southern lifestyle to the mainstream, most people think that rap music is all about "niggas" who sell drugs, buy rims and teeth grills, make up stupid dances and f--- bitches which is another big problem: respect for women
There are rappers who live by this ignorant code and truthfully, i blame the parents because it's all about how you were raised. if that's all he saw in his neighborhood and household plus aint never been nowhere and there was no one in their family that had sense enough to teach them what was right and wrong and some cases, encouraging bad habits and fueling fires -which is the reason why the gang culutre started and has continue to grow, so then you can't really expect them to talk about nothing else but that and act a certain way. At the same time, GROWN ASS MEN SHOULD KNOW BETTER SO THERE IS NO EXCUSE. Even the original meaning of what a snitch is has been twisted by this generation into some dumb s---t that makes no sense. (i'll speak on that next time - believe me)
Now for people like me who grew up on N.W.A and 2 live crew - to us, t albums like that was like comedy to us and the late Eazy-E even said in many interviews that their songs about sex and women were done just for fun/laughs and shock value the same way Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy and Redd Foxx did in their stand-up acts so he found it very interesting that rappers get hated on and protested against for the same things that are shown in action, comedy and porno movies everyday and i totally agree ! BTW, my favorite rap song of all-time is "F--- THE POLICE" by N.W.A - my favorite rap group for many different reasons !)
To all my aspiring rap artists - BE YOURSELF AND A LEADER - do not let anyone dictate your direction especially if they don't know about music - Outkast, Lauryn Hill, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Ludacris and Eminem have proven that you can make meaningful, innovative creative rap music and still sell records on a commercial level that companies want and make their money off
To all the hating old timers and narrow minders, STOP HATING ON RAP AND HIP-HOP - there is a lot of great hip-hop/rap music out there that is different from the norm (my music being one of them). From 1987 to now, there were amazing classic, creative rap albums that changed the game that you can understand and would love to get into and for anybody out there that wants a list on what to get, email me back at this email and it will be my honor to give it to you !
stay tuned for my honors email where i honor the great musical legends of the industry and you get to see a clip of these people in action - until then, PLANET 12 IS UPON YALL
HOLLA IF U FEEL ME ON THIS !
L*A*W - THE MOST......U ALREADY KNOW
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Thursday, May 22, 2008
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Current mood: thankful
Category: Music
GREETINGS EARTHLINGS
Welcome to the next chapter of my honor series where we take a deeper look at some of the greatest artists/groups in the music business who has tremendous influence on myself and many others and unlike most publications and tributes, I get deep with it to make sure that yall understand the accomplishments that are very often overlooked or forgotten about......or simply not recognized
Ronnie Devoe, Bobby Brown, Ricky Bell, Mike Bivins, Ralph Tresvant and Johnny Gill - yall already know who i'm referring to when i say those names: NEW EDITION
To explain the tremendous impact and legacy of this R&B/Pop group puts me in a state of euphoria. For most of us who grew up in the 1980's, New Edition was our generation's Temptations and Jackson 5 all rolled into one bad-ass supergroup. Those electrifying dance routines, Unique combinations and vocal skills and a vast catalog of classic songs. They are also the ONLY R&B group where ALL the members went on to have big solo success only to regroup and show the world that their time was not up. It's also safe to say that if it wasn't for NE, the R&B group wave of the late 80's, 90's and 2000's which featured now legendary groups like Boyz II Men, Jodeci, Troop (often called the west coast New Edition), Silk, Another Bad Creation, B2K, N'Sync, Backstreet Boys and of course, L*A*W would never ever exist without the undeniable blueprint of New Edition. A lot of what i do on stage vocally, movement, blocking and stage presence is based on the whole New Editon saga.
Born and raised in the rough Orchard Park Projects in Boston, Mass, Bobby, Mike and Ricky were all childhood friends whose love for Basketball brought them together and the music inspired them to get involved in talent shows to earn money for movies and candy. the group was formed by Brooke Payne, who still today serves as their manager and choreographer. Ralph Tresvant was next to join the group and to complete the circle, Brooke brought in his nephew Ronnie. They would often steal the show and win by performing Jackson 5 and L.T.D songs and it was at one of these shows where a former singer/musician turned songwriter-producer named Maurice Starr who decided to record and put the group under his tutelage. The results: The 1983 classic "Candy Girl" album which featured hit songs like "Popcorn Love" , "Is This The End" , "Candy Girl" and the Bobby Brown classic "Jealous Girl". I swear to yall that me and my cousins wanted to be like them soooo bad that we would watch the video over and over trying to get that complex choreography and harmony and i actually won my first talent show singing 'Lost in Love" from their second album.
Their sound was obvious bubblegum R&B with certified Jackson 5 tendencies but it had a serious street hip-hop edge courtesy of each member's extroadinary breakdance and rap skill which was very much like another excellent and verrry underrated bad ass R&B group from Staten Island called The Force MD's (remember the song "Tender Love" - i will do an honor series on them real soon for the true R&B fans that know about this group).
Though Ricky and Bobby got certain leads in songs while Ronnie and Mike dished out raps with occassional lead vocals, Ralph's distinct voice made him the quintessential lead singer of the 80's and garnered obvious comparisons to Michael Jackson. Every show they did was pure pandemonium as the album picked up 1 in 13 countries. However, as most New Edition fans know, the group became the victims of the bad record deals and broken promises as they started getting checks for $1.87 after the first tour only to be followed by the embarrasment of having a huge album but still living in the projects. They would continue for years to get stuck in bad contracts and fulfilling obligations for owing money. "That's why we are the strongest touring group in the world. Album sales were never a plus which forced us to put in more work" says Ralph
A year later, the group would sue Maurice Starr and the Streetwise record label for missing funds. New Edition kept control of the name and marched on to MCA Records to record their hugely successful platinum album which included big hits like "Cool It Now" , "My Secret" and the Bobby Brown led classic written by the legendary Ray Parker Jr, "Mr Telephone Man". Around this time, inner turmoil surfaced on two levels: other members asking for more vocal parts of a song as opposed to Ralph always having to sing lead and of course, Bobby Brown. Bobby's erratic behavior was more towards the structure of the group as opposed to the group itself as he began doing things on stage like grinding his hips, taking off his shirt and singing songs longer than its standard 3 minutes (a prelude of things to come) which totally went against the squeaky clean commercial image that the group had adopted during their move to MCA. But the truth is behind close doors, they were not the boys next door with stories of older groupie women and their daughters have become that of legend.
Contrary to popular rumor, Bobby was asked to leave the group which was followed by MCA giving him a solo deal upon noticing his need for the spotlight and tremendous vocal and dance talent. The group marched on with 1986's "All For Love" which spawned more hits like "A Little Bit Of Love" , "With You All The Way" and "Count Me Out" followed by a tribute album to 50's doo-wop called "Under The Blue Moon" which didn't do as well. The following year after a moderate successful first album, Bobby Brown emerged as a bonafide pop superstar with the 8 million worldwide seller "Don't Be Cruel" with smash hits like "My Pregogative", "Roni", "Rock Wit'cha" and "Every Little Step". His furious dance moves (including the infamous Bobby Brown Hump) , hair style and bad-boy swagger influence can be seen in today's singers like Usher (who did a Bobby Brown medley on his live album), Chris Brown, Omarion and even Ciara. To make matters worse, Former producer Maurice Starr made a oath to get even with the group for leaving him by putting together a white version of the group and following the same structure and pattern who would be known to the world as The New Kids On The Block, who ended up selling more records and merchandising than New Edition ever dreamed of and this opened the door for the white boy band phase that would dominate the late 90's with groups like N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees and O-Town. "We felt a backlash and was kinda mad about it but had we would've had that kind of success like them, we probably wouldn't have a 25 year history" says Mike.
Ralph began contemplating a solo deal like his good friend Bobby. With the possibility of losing a lead singer, Mike went and got Johnny Gill. Born In Washington D.C, Johnny's already-matured voice had peers and critics calling him Baby Luther in the early 80's with hits like "Half-Crazy" and his big hit with Stacey Lattisaw "Perfect combination". As the story goes, the group was in transition to work with the Janet Jackson's red-hot production team Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis on their next album. When Ralph took a break from working on solo songs to come to Minneapolis to find that there was a new member, there was a big explosion of conflict that got very ugly. But after a meeting, Ralph as well as the other members saw that Johnny's voice and maturity was what they needed to get away from the bubblegum and develop a new sound that reflected their coming into manhood. 1988's "Heartbreak" sold 2 million records with hits like "If It Isn't Love" , "Can You Stand The Rain", "Crucial" and "You're Not My Kind Of Girl" and created one of most controversial but exciting tours which included former bandmate Bobby Brown and Guy - another legendary R&B group headed by New Jack swing master Teddy Riley. Bobby later on would date and marry pop princess Whitney Houston. No need to go into that story (lol)
In 1990, the group devised one of the most successful laid-out plans in music history. Each member went solo and started their own chapters in R&B/Pop history:
Johnny Gill's classic double platinum solo album with hits like "Rub You The Right Way" and "My, My, My" made him the premier ballader singer of that time period and stole the show everywhere he performed.
Ralph's platinum solo album saw him showing off the silky love side of him with smash hits like "Sensitivity" . "Do What I Gotta Do" and "Stone Cold Gentleman"
But the trio of Bell Biv Devoe proved to be the strongest with an even tremendous influence on so many levels. Their entire Triple-Platinum innovative "Posion" album became the soundtrack of the year for cars and jeeps with songs like "Dope" ,"Poison", "I Thought It Was Me" and of course, "Do Me" which coined another popular R&B catchphrase "Smack it up, flip it, rub it down - OH NO !!!"
Their hybrid of hardcore hip-hop beats, sexually aggressive lyrics with street slang mixed with R&B/Pop Stylings as well as their "mental" clothing style set a trend in the fashion world. BBD is were definitely the first group to make sport jerseys, Starter sports caps and mitch-match but same color sneakers or boots with the logo/sales tag a fashion statement in the streets as well as baggy street clothing. They even had Bobby Brown dressing like them for awhile (lol) as well as another group who would use BBD'S clothing and music style as their blueprint two years later: TLC and if you listen to their first album, you will hear Bell Biv Devoe's influence all over
All the members supported each others solo projects, appeared in each others videos and even made fans dreams come true when all six members reunited on stage for a heart-stopping dynamic performance to open up the MTV Music Awards in 1990.
Mike also had become quite the businessman by starting his own production company and discovering a group out of Philly named after a New Edition song called Boyz II Men who would go on to make history with multi-platinum worldwide selling albums and several 1's breaking the records of artist like Elvis Presley. In 1994. all the members except for Bobby Brown who had scored big 1992 with his double platinum "Bobby album, experienced less succes with their second albums which only led to the envitable big reunion which many people doubted and said would never happen. Johnny teamed up with R&B legends Keith Sweat and the late Gerald Levert to form a group called LSG in which the album sold over two million records
But in 1996 after a 10 year break, the classic and my favorite NE album "Home Again" featuring all six members debuted at 1 and sold over 3 million records with hits like "Hit Me Off" , "You Don't Have To Worry" and " plus including a high-profile tour which started off real good the first 4 months and ended up being a disaster dued to egos, fights and reported shootouts and of course, Bobby Brown drama who by this time was the tabloid paper's wet dream due to his high-profile marriage to Whitney, run-ins with the law and his impending drug use.
From 1997- 2003, the "Johnny Gill" version of New Edition toured on and off while Ralph and Johnny pursued acting careers doing stage plays and Bobby manage to create a brand for himself with his popular reality show "Being Bobby Brown". Ronnie became a serious real estate agent as well. Long time NE admirer Sean "Puffy" Combs signed the group to a new well financed record deal with Bad Boy records which freed them of a 20 year contract with MCA that had the group in limbo financially for much too long. Though the "One Love" album was a solid effort (i highly recommend it) and went Gold on the strength of NE's mighty fan base, there was little to no promotion behind it due to Sean's focus being elsewhere but it did create one of the group's finest gems - the club anthem "Hot 2nite". On the heels of their now classic performance at the B.E.T awards with Bobby Brown joining them, the group is set to plan a big tour for their 25th year anniversary in 2008 as well as plans for a new album. Ralph just recently put out another solo album which is being distributed through internet sales and directly at the shows to the fans.
New Edition have proven themselves to be the ultimate legacy in music history on a bigger level by being the only R&B group to still sell out shows and stadiums and still drive women crazy. Last year in New York, the tickets sold out so fast that two more shows had to be added. The year before, as their limo pulled in for an outside gig in brooklyn, women 18-35 with banners and old NE memorbrillia chased their limo and cried as if they were a new group with a new album. Some things just never change.
WITNESS THE BOYS IN ACTION:
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