Stevie Wonder in the 90s and Beyond (S/D)

Really, a great album; only dud when compared to the seventies output.

^^^total jam... Been listening to Foreign Exchange's cover all day and thinking how gorgeous the melody was before realizing it was a Stevie song

I often say dismissively that anything from Woman in Red on sucks donkey dicks, but honestly, Jungle Fever sdtk has it's moments (and Overjoyed is sweeping).

(and that Foreign Exchange jam with Darien Brockington has been my SHIT lately!)

Have you heard their new album? It is absolutely beautiful! One of my favorite discoveries this year.

so i should boot slsk before bed?

YES!

I need to go back and hear their first.

Hmm will have to check this out.

what's the album called rev>

In the meantime, check out their Stevie cover

xp: Leave It All Behind

ha....I may have, at least on a subconcious level, bumped this thread because I wanted to talk about Foreign Exchange

good god, that off-kilter quantizing thing mixed with the composition makes this a gem

must have

plus the coda with the Brazilian(?) rhythms!

The drum sound in the OG version is so incredibly 1991. XD

Plus, sounds like 1991 sounds like awesome.

― Eric H., Sunday, October 26, 2008 12:44 PM Bookmark

91 was such a weird year technologically. that whole teddy riley thing was heavy in the air.

the studio i was working out of then was very into gating snares and adding m1 keyboard lines to everything, whereas (as you can imagine), we were all into sp1200 grit, so like, engineer dude, please, can you not add reverb unless we ask!

jungle fever certainly has that post-teddy riley feel, which i'm finding perspective on these days.

I was thinking more go-go in terms of the drums than NJS.

that's funny you bring that up. i was going over a thing today in my mind how go-go influenced the drumulator programming in post-electro hip-hop between 85 and 86, and of course, infiltrating fully with herbie love bug in 86 and 87, which all directly influenced new jack swing with guy in 88

I hadn't really made that connection. I always thought of Riley's primary influence being Jam & Lewis, but there is a lot of go-go there too, whether second-hand or direct.

what prompted this thought was an interview i did with cozmo d of newclues. he made a point to say that hearing do or die bedstuy in 85 convinced him to change the sound of his group since they were both from bedstuy. he knew they were into go-go.

when andre harell started uptown, that uptown's kickin jam was all drumaltor in that do or die style.

andre harell of course, was the main financial man behind the early days of teddy riley.

etc

but yeah, i think riley had his roots in jam & lewis methods, whereas herbie luv bug did not.

Okay, now that I think about more, those swung, probably go-go-inspired, drums are all over the place in mid-80s rap, and it definitely makes sense that that's where Riley would have picked that up.

So I guess that leaves the question of how these Brooklyn dudes got into DC go-go.

And another tangent: "Drag Rap"/"Triggerman" is pretty much in that style. So in New Orleans, we have go-go rhythms merging back into the second-line beats that probably influenced go-go in the first place, if indirectly.

we've completely ruined this thread...

anyway, yeah, that triggaman beat defined nola after bass began to fade, right. it was like, i had Gregory D's Throwdown in 1987 (which was the first Mannie Fresh release?), then Gregory D put out Rulz the Nation in 1989 which was like, part bass, part post-nwa hard, then DJ Jimi hit with where they at (I didn't hear T Tucker until later) and nola never looked back!

brooklyn is such a melting pot of black regional culture (i work with so many trinidadians).

not sure i can truly comment on the hip-hop/go-go lineage, but of course, melle mel redid trouble funk's "pump me up", and 2 live crew redid "drop the bomb", so...

i remember hearing trouble funk outside of detroit before moving to florida circa 82/83!

don't hate, but the song he did with 98 degrees for the Mulan soundtrack ("True To Your Heart") is a jam.

Okay, so to bring this back around, did Stevie Wonder ever record anything with a pronounced go-go influence prior to Jungle Fever, which would have come after "Da Butt" was a huge national hit? I'm not familiar enough with his mid-late 80s output to say.

Good question!
I guess Trouble Funk paved the underground, and EU created the highway...so I doubt many bigger (aging) acts would have checked out anything like that before Da Butt (and to a lesser extent, EU + Salt & Pepa's hit).

Missing link here: very-late-'87's Characters.

Also, as far as go-go's influence on Teddy Riley: I-95 from New York to Philly to D.C.

Tell me about Characters! Where does it fit into this?

"Feeding off the Love of the Land" isn't on the Jungle Fever soundtrack, but it's gorgeous.

I need to buy Characters; I've taken it for granted cuz cheap copies are so easy to find.

good tangents on this thread

The thread might have been more interesting if it had covered Stevie Wonder in the 80s and beyond. Which, other than maybe "Hotter Than July" is not really seen as "classic Stevie Wonder", but still contains a lot of great music. (And a couple of stinkers...)

god damn you geir, stfu. stfu. stfu.

The best thing between "Do I Do" and the Jungle Fever soundtrack is undoubtedly "Overjoyed." A song he wrote in the '70s.

http://img702.mytextgraphics.com/sparklee/2010/04/26/5503f627b3643a8321b745cb77cc23d9.gif

Haha, srsly tho, Jungle Fever soundtrack is very easily the best thing he's done post Musiquarium. Lots of good rhythms and loops and repetition.

But does it have chords?