|
[ s o l o : 4 . b r u t h a s . a n d . a . b a s s ] [ t e x t . o n l y . v e r s i o n ] by Cyclone Wehner What if Mary J Blige's "My Life" had come out and no one knew about it? Or Maxwell's "Urban Hang Suite"? It's heartbreaking to think that such classic soul records could be forever lost in the weekly cloudbursts of new music. So y'all better not sleep on Solo's "4 Bruthas And A Bass". More than any of their contemporaries, Solo deserve to be feted by the same public that has sustained the careers of the 90s' best-known vocal groups: Boyz II Men and Jodeci. Solo first emerged in 1995 on Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis' Perspective label (itself an affiliate of A&M/PolyGram) with their eponymous debut. Within soul circles, it was deemed an outstanding release. Although songs like "Blowin' My Mind" and "Heaven" harked back to another musical era, they still captured the cadences of modern love that reverberate through New Jack Swing. Bravely, Solo also madeover classic tunes by Sam Cooke ("A Change Is Gonna Come", among others) and The Drifters ("Under The Boardwalk"). And their noble efforts justified their biographer's comparing them to The Temptations. With three dynamic vocalists (Eunique Mack, Darnell Chavis and Daniele Stokes) and a double-bass player (Robert Anderson), Solo brought a unique sound, honed, quite literally, on the streets. Darnell is blessed with a raw, churchy vocal. Eunique brings the ol' skool soul feel. And Daniele has a supple, graceful tenor. Pitch all this with Anderson's jazzy, vibey bass, and you have music with texture and depth. It was on New York's pavements that the group, singing for small change from passers-by, were discovered by the Minneapolis producers (by chance, Jimmy and Terry just happened to be in the Big Apple on business). Solo's potential for enduring success was validated by US platinum sales, which even led to an invitation from McDonald's to record a commercial ("Deluxe Love", which, the group say today, took but an hour to lay down). The group also attracted a following in Europe, Japan and Australia, where funk DJs, journalists and soul-lovers alike get moist-eyed at the very mention of their name. Still, a lot has gone down in the past three years. A&M decided to turn Perspective into a logo only, with Jam and Lewis virtually written out of the script. Inevitably, this left their stable of acts up in the air, on a label that has since come under criticism for its mishandling of urban product, generally. But, at any rate, Solo are now back with their sophomore, "4 Bruthas And A Bass". And if anyone imagined for a minute that Solo would be lost without the guidance of their mentors, they will be left eating their proverbial hats, for this is simply one of the year's strongest records. What makes this album special is Solo's vocal interplay, lilting melodies and retro-nuevo musicianship. While the group have worked with outsiders like Raphael Saadiq (Tony Toni Tone) and Gerald Levert, together with his regular songwriting partner Tony Nicholas, they've also assumed a good part of the production chores themselves. The album opens with the first single: a club-bound neo-swing tune called "Touch Me". It also offers freaky R&B songs like "Luv-All-Day", underpinned by Anderson's sexy bass, and "Love You Down". There is a wedding ballad: "Till Death Do Us Part", which features female vocal trio, Brownstone. And there are heart-on-the-sleeve kind of songs such as "What Would This World Be", which show that there are some emotionally generous men in the world beyond "Waiting To Exhale", after all! In a perfect world, this album would be accompanied by the same kind of aggressive marketing campaign as releases from today's hot ticket male vocal outfits, Dru Hill and Next. Still, if Solo are angry with an ineffective label situation, they are maintaining a dignity that makes their current plight ever the more affecting. This interview catches Solo back in their New Jersey base after a successful promo visit to Texas. The group's three singers look back on where they've been -- and, perhaps more importantly, where they're heading. CYCLONE WEHNER: The public weren't prepared for this album coming out. It looks like the label hasn't given it a big marketing push . . . What's the story? Daniele: Um, you're correct [laughs quietly]. CW: What kind of response are you getting from the international media? Daniele: So far we're getting great responses. Everyone's saying it's a good follow-up. It represents the group in terms of growth and soul music for today. CW: Did Jimmy and Terry's departure from Perspective affect you greatly? Daniele: Yeah [laughs], it affected us greatly. I think they were just rooting for us. They were behind the push that we had on our last album. You know, they were the ones at the record company that really believed in us, so everything got done because of them because they wanted to get it done. And, in this case, we're on a label where we really don't have a connection with the people there as far as . . . YouknowwhatI'msayin'? They didn't discover us. We're just on the label, so there's not a lot of heart put into it by the people who are pushing the product, so that was difficult, but we're trying to deal with it. CW: It seems to be something to do with the label at large. It's not just Perspective. Eunique: Ever since Seagram bought PolyGram . . . Daniele: Yeah, there's another transition, so we're gonna be the group that survives two record label transition periods. CW: How do you see this album in relation to the first? Daniele: The difference is that with the first we were just starting and this is us as we've grown a little: we've grown musically, in relationships, spiritually . . . so it's just a growth record. CW: I notice that you have carried on the theme of the artwork -- the first CD had "Side 1" stamped on it and this has "Side 2". Do you regard this one as Volume Two? Daniele: Absolutely. CW: You brought in Raphael Saadiq and Gerald Levert for this album. How did you get in touch with those guys and what made you decide to work with them? Daniele: Well, they were two people who we've always been fans of as a group. We got to do some touring with Gerald and his father on the first LP. Darnell: And we've got some more shows coming up. Daniele: We're getting ready to go back out and do some more with them. It was a nice relationship between us and him, so when they said what producers beside Jimmy and Terry are we interested in working with, Gerald was at the top of this list and so was Raphael. CW: Did you work with anyone else along the way? Daniele: Most of the other people on the album were introduced to us straight away. One group -- Celebrity Status, they came with a song called "Till Death Do Us Part". When we first started to produce our own songs the record label was kind of iffy about whether we could deal with the job [laughs], so they put us with another guy named Nitro and he co-produced two songs with us. CW: Why was the label iffy about that because, say, Jodeci were producing themselves from the outset? Eunique: I don't understand. I think the label was iffy like that because they didn't really know us as people. Had we been still under Perspective with Jam and Lewis, they would've understood because they knew where we were musically and what we were trying to reach for. So I think that has a lot to do with them not knowing the group. CW: Brownstone are generally regarded as one of the strongest female vocal groups of recent times. How did you come to collaborate with them on "Till Death Do Us Part"? Daniele: Once again, they were at the top of our list when the song came through to do a duet with a girl or a girl group. We thought a girl group, because we're three vocalists with a bassist. So we thought, 'Who are some strong vocal female groups with different voices like ours?' And they were one of the first vocal groups that popped into our heads. CW: This record has the potential to crossover -- appeal to both pop and R&B audiences. Are you conscious of that divide in the States and elsewhere? Is there still a divide? Eunique: Yeah, there's still that divide. We're conscious of it but when we make music, not until the song's done will we go, 'Oh that sounds like this and that sounds like that.' We just try to make the song as a great song; the best song that we can make it. So we're not thinking, when we're coming up with songs or we're singing songs, 'I've gotta sing this song like it's a pop song'; 'I've gotta sing this song like it's an R&B song'. We just try to have a good time and bring out the soul in everything. Darnell: . . . make feel-good music. CW: You were actually the first to use the term 'new classic soul' -- it was even printed down the side of your CD. Eunique: Oh, thank-you! You realised! You remembered it! CW: Yeah, I did! Daniele: Not too many people remembered it. CW: Do you see yourselves as precursors to that neo-soul explosion? Eunique: Absolutely! Daniele: Definitely, and it's kinda . . . I don't wanna sound like Little Richard or anything [all laugh], but I mean it kinda frustrates me when I hear that term and to know that the term was something that we had tagged along with our music, but it's just reinvented, you know? You take the 'new' and you call it 'neo'. So it gets frustrating. But I'm glad to see that there are people out there doing 'new classic soul' music. CW: Which songs on this album mean the most to you personally? Darnell: I would have to say two little ditties we did -- "All Da Woman" and "Amen". "All Da Woman", meaning the way we like women: the way we look at them, the way we see them, the way we feel them. "Amen": giving praises to the Lord, and our realisation of the guiding force that's leading us wherever we're going. CW: There are so many male vocal groups out there (this year alone has seen acts like Ol Skool, Public Announcement, Voices Of Theory, Next and Dru Hill chart). Is it competitive? Eunique: We see it as competitive in a sense, but we just applaud everybody's interest in the creativity of music. We say, 'Do what you've gotta do -- get your music on'. We're competitive with ourselves for the most part. We wanna bring the best out in ourselves. We're never gonna reach perfection, but we keep trying for it. CW: The tracks you produced are amazing. Are you planning to do more production work for others? Eunique: We're currently trying to get a song on Latasha's album . . . We're writing for that. And we're trying for as many artists as we can. And there's another one, Carl Thomas, we're gonna try and get some songs to him as well. So yeah, we're trying to move towards that direction, as well as producing some groups of our own -- a female group called The Expression, a rapper that's on the album, Kieaun (Da Golden Child). CW: Would you like a label deal of your own? Daniele: Eventually -- we're working towards it. CW: How do you look back on the past three years? What have you learnt from being in the industry? Darnell: Growth. Daniele: I think we learned focus, too. And we also learned that at the end of the day, it's just like we're back on the streets when it really only depended on the four of us and the bass to make it through whatever we we're doing, so the same with this industry. When you go right down to the core of it, it really depends on all four of us and our bass. |