Rediscovering The Veldt’s Afrodisiac Album by Michael A. Gonzales #SleptOnSoul

March 8, 2016 by Comments

The Veldt - Afrodisiac Album Cover

Slept on Soul/The Veldt – Afrodisiac LP
By Michael A. Gonzales

Twin brothers Daniel and Danny Chavis, who co-founded their rock band the Veldt in 1987, have shared their varied musical tastes since they were kids dwelling in North Carolina. Raised in Apollo Heights, a subdivision located in Raleigh, both boys sang in a Baptist church choir before becoming wayward teenagers in the early ‘80s. Future lead guitarist Danny began playing along to his granddaddy’s B.B. King records when he was thirteen while singing bro Daniel wailed soul songs in deep-wooded juke joints with the funky cover band Isis, performing funky hits by Slave, Rick James and Prince for a hard drinking audience. Read more of this post

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#SleptOnSoul: Randy and The Gypsys by Michael A. Gonzales

February 17, 2016 by Comments

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Slept on Soul/Randy & The Gypsys
By Michael A. Gonzales

As the last born brother born into the Jackson family, Randy began his musical career playing catch-up to the towering reputations of his already famous Jackson Five siblings. Although Randy didn’t officially become a member of the group until the brothers departed from Motown, signed with CBS/Philadelphia International Records in 1975 and began calling themselves The Jacksons, he’d been preparing for his slot since he was a tot. Read more of this post

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#SleptOnSoul: Res’ ‘How I Do’ (2001) [FULL STREAM] @the1res

December 14, 2015 by Comments

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By Michael A. Gonzales | @gonzomike

We are taught from a young age to “never judge a book by its cover,” but that was exactly what I did in 2001 when copies of Res’ debut album How I Do began arriving at my Brooklyn garret that spring. Glancing at the innocent black and white photo taken by the usually provocative Ellen Von Unwerth, who has shot sexy snaps of Janet Jackson, Joi and Beyoncé, one sees a pretty-faced woman innocently looking over her shoulder as though being followed. In retrospect, the cover conveys a cinematic quality that was hauntingly beautiful, but at the time, I just thought it was boring. Automatically assuming what I perceived to be a lackluster image was reflective of the material within, I simply rejected Res based on that silly speculation. Read more of this post

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#SleptOnSoul: Terence Trent D’Arby’s ‘Neither Fish Nor Flesh’ (1989) by Michael A. Gonzales [FULL STREAM] @gonzomike @SANANDAMAITREYA

October 21, 2015 by Comments

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Every couple of years some former fan-turned-journalist comes along to rattle the fame cage of singer/songwriter/producer Sananda Francesco Maitreya, the man who used to be called Terence Trent D’Arby. In 2007, writer Miles Marshall Lewis rapped with the shadowy superstar for lit-journal The Believer and two weeks ago the New Statesman sent Kate Mossman to Italy to dig through Maitreya’s cobwebbed covered memories of his ‘80s pop past. In the story, Maitreya comes across as cool, kooky, philosophical and paranoid as he’s always been. Part of the reason for their sit down was to promote his latest sonic opus The Rise of the Zugebrian Time Lords, a title that reminds me of a bugged-out Roger Zelazny fantasy novel from the seventies. Read more of this post

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#SleptOnSoul: Shara Nelson’s ‘What Silence Knows’ by Michael A. Gonzales @gonzomike

September 1, 2015 by Comments

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Singer/songwriter Shara Nelson, who began her career as the first female vocalist to be down with electro-dub b-boys Massive Attack on the Bristol posse’s masterful 1991 debut album Blue Lines, has become the lost woman of trip-hop. Throughout the cocaine-fueled ‘90s, her voice could be heard crooning from the speakers of most cocktail lounges in Manhattan, but that was back when bars were still smoky and Massive Attack was the chill-out soundtrack for the end of the millennium. Nelson, who reminded me of Dusty Springfield – though with more grits and gravy – would go on to become the alternative Black chick of the moment. Read more of this post

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#SleptOnSoul: El DeBarge’s ‘Heart, Mind & Soul’ by Michael A. Gonzales [FULL ALBUM STREAM] @gonzomike @ElDeBarge @KennyEdmonds

August 10, 2015 by Comments

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Marvin Gaye has served as the coked-out patron saint for countless soul men who rightfully hear in his voice and music something sonically special and painfully honest. In his nearly forty-five year lifetime, Gaye rose from wannabe lounge lizard worshipping at the altar of Frank Sinatra to become one of the most distinctive vocalists of his generation. Coming out of the Motown music factory in the sixties, Gaye not only made hit singles (“Hitchhike,” “If This World Was Mine”), but also forced the label to think beyond their 7-inch singles mentality when he crafted the brilliant concept album What’s Going On in 1971. A hard-hitting aural statement that was sung in the softest voice, What’s Going On was as powerful as Martin Luther King marching through Selma, as strong as a Malcolm X speech, and as rousing as a Molotov cocktail thrown from a moving car during yet another civil unrest. Read more of this post

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#SleptOnSoul: D’Wayne Wiggins’ ‘Eyes Never Lie’ by Michael A. Gonzales [FULL ALBUM STREAM] @gonzomike @DWayneWiggins @TonyToniTone1

August 4, 2015 by Comments

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It was the winter of 1996 and Tony! Toni! Toné! was on the verge of falling apart. A few months before, as the group was set to release their best, and ultimately last, album House of Music, they were fighting with one another in the way that only family can: mean and vicious. Assigned by Vibe magazine to write a feature on the trio, the publicist told me that lead singer and bassist Raphael Saadiq (Wiggins) wanted to be interviewed separately from his older brother and group founder D’Wayne Wiggins, who was also the lead guitarist, and their (play) cousin and drummer Timothy Christian Riley. Read more of this post

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#SleptOnSoul: Jill Jones’ Self-Titled Debut Album by Michael A. Gonzales [FULL STREAM] @gonzomike @jilldjones

July 13, 2015 by Comments

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Even before Prince earned a vanity label from his slavemasters at Warner Brothers Records, he was already delivering wonderful funk and dance albums for his so-called protégés The Time, Vanity 6 and Shelia E. Making most of the music himself, at least as far as the artists’ debuts were concerned, Prince was a musical chameleon who flowed from the bottom-heavy soul of The Time to the electro-erotica of Vanity 6 to the percussion pop of Shelia E., while also churning out his own outstanding albums on a yearly basis.

While there were collaborators, be it Andre Cymone, Morris Day, Jesse Johnson, Wendy & Lisa or David Z., it’s obvious it was all about Prince’s vision as he became an aural Howard Roark constructing his own rhythmic fountainhead. After the chart success of side-projects that Prince often created under the monikers Jamie Starr, as well as the mega-blast that was Purple Rain, his royalness was granted the keys to the kingdom from Warner Brothers in the form of a state-of-the-art studio in his hometown of Minneapolis and a record label; both were named Paisley Park. Read more of this post

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#SleptOnSoul: Amy Winehouse’s ‘Frank’ by Michael A. Gonzales [FULL ALBUM STREAM] @gonzomike @amywinehouse

July 8, 2015 by Comments

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Dolled-up like a Phil Spector creation doo-wopping on a Bronx boulevard, Amy Winehouse came into most Americans’ homes with the release of her second album Back in Black in 2006. Even before I heard her voice, my friend and writer Bob Morales was raving about this girl from England who musically merged her love of old school soul and dusty hip-hop in a way that wasn’t corny. After burning me a CD, I immediately understood Bob’s attraction to that damaged dame singing about avoiding rehab, the plight of love, and her affection for Nas.

While some surface listening folks wanted to chide her for “trying to sound black,” as though white girls like Winehouse weren’t part of Berry Gordy’s pop dreams, there was a wrenching sincerity in her songs that made you realize that the blues in R&B were universal. Co-produced by Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson, whose fame meter skyrocketed afterward, Back in Black sounded like nothing else on the scene at the time as the music delved river deep, mountain high into the retro-sounds of Motown, the Brill Building, and every girl-group that ever shoo-wopped into a microphone. Read more of this post

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Slept On Soul: Cree Summer’s ‘Street Faërie’ by Michael A. Gonzales @IAmCreeSummer @gonzomike @lennykravitz

April 9, 2015 by Comments

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Slept on Soul:  Cree Summer/Street Faërie

By Michael A. Gonzales

Having spent much of the cocaine ‘80s and early ‘90s inside exciting New York City clubs (CBGB’s, Wetlands Preserve) watching the fem-funk-rock-soul antics of Black Rock Collation artists Felice Rosser (Faith), DK Dyson (Eye & I), Kelli Sae (JJ Jumpers) and Sophia Ramos (Sophia’s Toy) doing their thing on stage, I’m no stranger to the concept of Black girls rocking. Read more of this post

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#SleptOnSoul: Sleepy’s Theme ‘The Vinyl Room’ by Michael A. Gonzales @gonzomike @sleepybrownatl

December 23, 2014 by Comments

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Sleepy’s Theme – ‘The Vinyl Room‘ by Michael A. Gonzales

Producer/singer/songwriter Patrick “Sleepy” Brown wasn’t just inspired by yesteryear funk, the brother grew-up in the thick of it. As a boy, he traveled to gigs with his music playing daddy and Brick founder Jimmy Brown. When the Atlanta-based group released their monster debut Good High, their single “Dazz” made them urban dance floor darlings. Combining disco and jazz into sonic depth, Brick competed musically with big city boys Kool & the Gang and Mandrill; “Dazz,” with its deep groove and wicked flute solo, was an instant success.

Savoring the black stardust of the soul luminaries, Sleepy often stood in the shadows of backstage watching Cameo, Con Funk Shun, Switch and Brick throwing down as the audience worked themselves into funk frenzy.

“Just watching those guys walk on stage and turn it out was exciting,” Brown told me in 2004 as we sat in the lounge area of New York City radio station Hot-97. “Seeing my father up there was incredible. I knew then what I wanted to do.” Although Pop’s Brown brought his boy a set of drums, it still took a few years for Patrick to start taking music seriously.
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[SLEPT ON SOUL] Jesus Wept – P.M. Dawn by Michael A. Gonzales @gonzomike @OfficialPMDawn

November 13, 2014 by Comments

Slept On Soul : P.M. Dawn Jesus Wept by Michael A. Gonzales

Jesus Wept – P.M. Dawn by Michael A. Gonzales

Back in the early 1990s, when so-called “realness” began reigning supreme over rap music, most anyone not subscribing to the sinister outlook of street narratives was perceived as a fake punk just asking for a beat down. The equivalent of young Black kids being teased by their peers for “talking white,” the rules of rap realness kept the music as grimy as possible, caught up in a trick bag of ghetto demands. Real men, according to macho hip-hop mythology, represented and rapped about the streets, their honey booty sweeties and “playing the game” with the precision of hustler.

Unable to be merely content doing their own thing, some artists were determined to tear down any aural agitators who dared not to embrace the soiled imagery of crack infested buildings, pissy projects staircases and dope boys slinging rock on park benches until the break of dawn. While a few bohemian crews, namely De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and whoever else was down with the Native Tongues, was given a ghetto pass, perhaps because they socialized at the same spots (Union Square, The World) or recorded at the same studios.

Without a doubt, many hardcore hip-hop fans never really gave P.M. Dawn a chance. With their hippy clothes, surreal lyricism and Dr. Strange personas that reeked of Black mysticism and white witchcraft, P.M. Dawn wasn’t hanging in deathtrap hip-hop clubs, banging out beats on abandoned cars or worried about their baby mamma’s hounding them for child support. Indeed, as Prince Be later explained on the hypnotic single “Reality Used to Be a Friend of Mine” (1992), “What is real, a positive plane, reality and life are not the same.”

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#SleptOnSoul: Still Looking Good, Bernadette Cooper by Michael A. Gonzales @gonzomike @BernadetteCoopr

October 31, 2014 by Comments

Still Looking Good, Bernadette Cooper by Michael A Gonzales

Still Looking Good, Bernadette Cooper by Michael A. Gonzales

Although former Klymaxx singer, songwriter and producer Bernadette Cooper has never been anything like the women the Beach Boys harmonized about on their sunshine soundtracks, she is still a California girl. Raised in Compton, the “hood” that blessed us with both Barry White and N.W.A, Cooper got into music at a young age. Whether singing Aretha Franklin songs in first grade, listening to Sly Stone on the radio or admiring the drums on Isaac Hayes records, she knew early that music would be her life.

“My family never supported my music emotionally or spiritually,” Cooper says from her home in California. Currently working on her second solo album Last Diva on Earth, the project is her first solo venture in twenty-four years. “I was and still am, completely self motivated.” Becoming more serious about the funk when she was in high school, in the late-70s, Cooper formed the all-woman funk band Klymaxx, who would go on to become one of the biggest acts of the 80s.

Inspired by the past generation of mack divas (Lynn Collins, LaBelle, Brides of Funkenstein, and Chaka Khan) as well as Prince’s computer blue funk, Klymaxx was on a mission to kick ass. Besides Cooper, the group also featured singer Lorena Porter, guitarist Cheryl Cooley, keyboardist Lynn Malsby, vocalist Robin Grider and, later, bassist/producer Joyce “Fenderella” Irby.
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[SLEPT ON SOUL]Madame X – Madame X by Michael Gonzales @gonzomike

October 7, 2014 by Comments

Madame X - Madame X by Michael Gonzales

SLEPT ON SOUL!

Madame X – Madame X by Michael Gonzales

A look into the salacious, sultry, singin’, sista group

Back in the 1980s the girl group tradition was still kickin’ in stiletto heels. With the sexually charged trio Vanity 6 purring about being a “Nasty Girl” and the Mary Jane Girls up on the roof doing it “All Night Long,” those yesteryear hotties seemed to be embracing the post-seventies sexual liberation and hedonism of the ‘80s.
Still, the truth is, we don’t know much about what those fine femmes believed, because much like the singing “girls” that came before them, whether the Ronettes or Love Unlimited, girl groups rarely had much say in how they were portrayed. According to legend, Vanity came this close to being named Vagina and we all know what Rick James was smoking. Yet, while most girl-groups were created by men who wrote the lyrics, supplied the music and produced the sessions, Klymaxx was different. A real band founded by Compton born and raised drummer Bernadette Cooper in 1979, the group featured vocalist Lorena Porter, guitarist Cheryl Cooley, keyboardists Lynn Malsby and Robbin Grider and bassist Joyce Irby.

Signed to Solar Records, they were originally paired with outside producers and songwriters including label-mates Calloway and members of Lakeside. Yet, it was Minneapolis musicians Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam, who contributed material to half of their second album Girls Will Be Girls, that would have the most creative impact on helping Klymaxx define their musical image.
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[SLEPT ON SOUL] Prototype- Rachid by Michael Gonzales @gonzomike

August 21, 2014 by Comments

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Slept on Soul: Prototype – Rachid

by Michael Gonzales

Coming tardy to the party, lately it’s been all about the Weeknd: continuously YouTube playing the video to his hypnotic “Wicked Games,” packing the weed pipe for yet another maudlin music session of House of Balloons, homeboy Abel Tesfaye’s hedonistic whine takes me on a post-millennial trip through a landscape of youthful heartbreak, shattered egos and enough drugs to kill an elephant.

Alongside Santigold, Frank Ocean, Miguel, the Foreign Exchange, SZA, Adrian Young and others, sepia skinned sound warriors who’ve sought the less traveled road for their soul stylings have finally come in vogue, with the cool kids referring to these mavericks as “Alt-R&B.” Drawing more on the electronic emotions of Prince and Depeche Mode than the gospel church roots of yesteryear performers, these artists are often celebrated by critics and fans alike for reviving a genre (soul) that had sung itself into a corner.

Unafraid of being artfully experimental, a few of these artists have actually broken through in terms of sells, major tours and commercial licensing deals. Still, as exciting as I find the new school of soul boys and girls doing the damned thing, it’s disheartening that none of the kids have ever name-checked the aural boldness of singer/conceptualist Rachid and his thrilling debut Prototype as inspiration.
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#SleptOnSoul: Chico DeBarge’s ‘Long Time No See’ by Michael A. Gonzales @gonzomike @MrChicoDeBarge

July 1, 2014 by Comments

SLEPT ON SOUL: Long Time No See Chico Debarge
Editorial note: soulhead.com is proud to present our newest feature “Slept on Soul”. This new column will examine back in the day albums that fell between the cracks of the Black music cultural landscape and detail the lives of unsung soul stars.  As a part of our continued mission to “uplift classic artists and shed light on the best in new music”, this new feature is here to both stoke your minds and ignite your ears.  Press Release

SLEPT ON SOUL: Long Time No See – Chico DeBarge (1997)

Column by Michael A. Gonzales

Seventeen years ago, during the summer of 1997, 29-year-old Chico DeBarge was at Battery Studios working on his then upcoming album Long Time No See (Universal/Kedar Entertainment). Dressed in a hoodie and jeans, he wore a baseball cap over a freshly shaven head. Recently released from prison after doing a six-year stretch on drug conspiracy charges, DeBarge was happy to finally be free.

“When I was locked-up, all I thought about was picking-up the pieces of my life,” Chico told me later that day. “I knew a lot of brothers who just got out of jail who were still representing crime, but I’m a positive person and I just wanted to come out a productive person. After coming out of prison, my only goal was to make music that would get me to the other side of the pain.”

Relocating to New York City, Chico was signed by former D’Angelo manager Kedar Massenburg, the neo-soul idol maker behind the success of Erykah Badu, who released her debut Baduizm that February. “The first thing I made him do was cut his hair,” Kedar said in 2007. “I wanted him to be bald and rugged, not some Al B. Sure looking brother.”

Recording in various studios including Soundcastle Recording in Los Angeles, Chico wasted no time recruiting brother El and sister Bunny to join him. Back in the eighties, like his older brother and sister, Chico was also once signed to Motown Records. However, instead of joining the family group DeBarge, best known for velvety ballads “Time Will Reveal” and “I Like It” as well The Last Dragon featured “Rhythm of the Night,” Chico was a solo Prince wannabe whose last album Kiss Serious (1987) was produced mostly by former Revolution bassist Brownmark. Read more of this post

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