Tag: la reid
Jheri Curl June: The Mac Band’s “Roses Are Red”
Like other LaFace productions of its vintage, “Roses Are Red” captured a transitional moment, with the hard-hitting drums (played by L.A. himself) heralding the coming of New Jack Swing. But just watch the video above, which looks like a group of uncles getting a few wine coolers deep and spontaneously trying to recreate Prince’s video…
Jheri Curl June: Pebbles’ “Mercedes Boy”
We’ve spoken briefly about Perri “Pebbles” Reid before, in the context of our 2016 profile of her ex-husband and producer, L.A. Reid, as well as our 2018 profile on André Cymone, who co-wrote her contribution to the Beverly Hills Cop II soundtrack, “Love/Hate.” But part of the point of Jheri Curl June Ladies’ Week is…
The Return of Jheri Curl June: Best Curls in the World
So, let’s begin with the elephant in the room. As you might recall, last year the month of June began mere days after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which made the idea of a semi-irreverent celebration of dated Black music and hairstyles by two privileged White people feel… tone-deaf, to say the…
Jheri Curl June: Bobby Brown’s “Don’t Be Cruel”
As we’ve mentioned before, by the late 1980s, the sound of mainstream R&B was developing into what would become known as New Jack Swing. We’ve been writing about this for five years now, so if you don’t get it by now, let me explain it in Pokémon terms: your starter Pokémon is Disco. With love,…
Jheri Curl June Special: André Cymone
It’s a poetic fluke of the cosmos that so many Jheri Curl Music innovators’ birthdays fall in June, the genre’s holiest month. So far, we’ve highlighted Prince (June 7), Jimmy Jam (June 6), L.A. Reid (also June 7), and Jesse Johnson (June 1)–as well as Michael Jackson, who passed away on June 25, 2009. Now, on…