Body Rockin’ Rites of Passage
I slipped my father’s aviator sunglasses onto my face under the red bandanna I had tightly strapped around my head. I sauntered through the cold storage doors to the full length mirror in his bedroom. I stared at the 12 year old facing me, complete with fishnet t-shirt and long-sleeved, red matching knit undershirt beneath, blue sweat pants with the corporate logo from my father’s company hidden beneath Bruce Jenner-style shorts. My socks were pure off-white, another product of my dad’s dresser, and the shoes: pink and purple Vans. I was a rainbow of fruit flavors. A costume designer for… Continue reading
Electronica
Music business marketing term, coined 1996, for a collection of electronic dance-music styles, including techno, jungle, and trip-hop. The commercial failure of early-’90s dance acts such as T99, Prodigy, and Utah Saints was seemingly forgotten in the industry’s rush to find a replacement for waning alternative rock bands.
MTV obligingly got behind the “new” movement, promoting electronic music wherever possible, and even adopting a more “techno” graphic identity. One early 1997 MTV promo clip featured Perry Farrell: “It’s very popular right now to try to entice people into dancing,” said the singer, “and I think it’s so healthy.”
A next… Continue reading
Eazy-E
West Coast rapper who founded his Ruthless Records label reportedly with proceeds from drug dealing. Ruthless debuted with Eazy-E’s solo album Eazy-Duz-It (1988), a proto-gangsta album that sold half a million copies. The following year Eazy assembled the combustible N.W.A, hip-hop’s most successful collection of talent.
Post-N.W.A, the diminutive Eazy-E and his manager Jerry Heller were viciously lampooned in raps by the N.W.A members most often credited with the band’s success, Ice Cube and Dr. Dre. Although Eazy-E made inexplicable gestures like befriending Officer Theodore Briseno (one of the policemen in the Rodney King case) and, in 1991, attending a… Continue reading
Koresh, David
Self-styled messiah and leader of the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas. Koresh was a failed rock musician on L.A.’s Sunset Strip (friends and neighbors described his music as “melodic rock,” though he was also a fan of heavy metal) destined not to find fame until February 28, 1993, when the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms raided his compound on the suspicion that the cult was illegally hoarding machine guns.
The Branch Davidians fought back, picking off four ATF agents, and a 51-day standoff ensued. FBI and ATF attempts to force an end included the blasting of rock… Continue reading
The Dust Brothers
Influential Los Angeles-based record producing team of Mike Simpson (b. circa 1965) and John King (b. circa 1965). Known for hip-hop-inflected rock records, the Dust Brothers have seen two of their albums acclaimed as contemporary classics: Paul’s Boutique (1989) by the Beastie Boys, and the Grammy-winning Odelay (1996), by Beck. Simpson and King met in 1983 at the radio station of Pomona College, and then studied their beats as party DJs before connecting with Los Angeles label Delicious Vinyl in the late 1980s.
Initially successful with debut albums by Delicious Vinyl’s pop-rap crossovers Tone Loc and Young MC (both 1989),… Continue reading
Dr. Dre – as in gangsta funk
With the first release on his Death Row records this former N.W.A producer-rapper could claim to have changed the face of hip-hop. Dre’s unanticipated multi-platinum album The Chronic (1992) turned a clutch of funk classics into a new form dubbed “G-Funk” (as in gangsta funk). Juddering basslines lulled listeners into a mid-tempo stupor while high-end ’70s synths wove a hypnotic top-end around implacable gangsta threats; three straight Chronic hits were accompanied by Dre-directed videos evoking an idyllic gangsta lifestyle (the title is an alias for marijuana).
Dre, once a member of the obscure, effetely clad funk group World Class Wreckin’… Continue reading
De La Soul
Long Island, New York, hip-hop trio whose 1989 debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising, was a benchmark for rap’s crossover to a college audience. The new sound was based on sophomoric humor, progressive politics, and trippy aural collage which sampled from sources as diverse as Liberace, Funkadelic, and Schoolhouse Rock.
The sophomore outing from De La Soul–made up of Posdnuos (b. Kelvin Mercer, 1969), Trugoy the Dove (b. David Jolicoeur, 1968), and “Pasemaster” Mase (b. Vincent Mason Jr., 1970)–was De La Soul is Dead (1991) signalled a radical change in direction: with its shattered flowerpot cover, the record was… Continue reading
Clinton, George
Through his bands Parliament and Funkadelic, as well as innumerable offshoots and solo projects, George Clinton has created a vision which combines Black Nationalism, psychedelic hedonism, and sci-fi lunacy. “P-Funk”‘s music–blending rubbery bass, trippy synths, and skewed, multilayered vocals–is a model of the anarchic harmony envisioned in songs like “One Nation Under a Groove” (1978).
Clinton’s influence waned after the 1983 solo hit “Atomic Dog,” as James Brown’s more minimal groove dominated hip-hop sampling. But in 1989, the bizarrely attired bandleader was embraced by a new generation of rappers, beginning with De La Soul’s sample of “(Not Just) Knee Deep”… Continue reading
Christian rap
Minor musical trend in which hopeful musicians attach wholesome messages to potent beats. Christian rap’s one notable success is DC Talk, a squeaky-clean trio that emerged from Liberty University (home of Moral Majority founder and televangelist Jerry Falwell) and sold over 500,000 copies of each of their three albums.
On the fringes of Christian rap are such strangers to Billboard as the S.S. MOB (Soul Serving Ministers on Board), T-Bone, and the Gospel Gangstas, an ensemble of former L.A. gang members who adapt gangsta rap posturing to the Lord’s message.
This story was reported nationally in Newsweek in November 1994… Continue reading
Harrell, Andre – Black entertainment entrepreneur
Black entertainment entrepreneur who in 1988 founded Uptown Entertainment, a music, film and television conglomerate with a seven-year, $50 million credit line from MCA Records and Universal Pictures.
The Bronx-born Harrell started his career at 16 as the first half of the hit rap duo Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, before studying communications and business management, and selling radio ads; in 1983 Harrell joined rap mogul Russell Simmons’ Rush Management, rising to a vice president’s position.
Harrell founded Uptown Records in 1987, earning an unimpeachable reputation for predicting popular black-music taste. A series of gold- and platinum-selling albums from artists… Continue reading