Dystopian Dance Party

Tag: levert

  • Jheri Curl June: Troop’s “Mamacita”

    It’s the end of yet another Jheri Curl June, and of course that means it’s time to signal the end of an era for Jheri Curl Music. As we’ve mentioned many times, musical scenes have an incredibly short lifespan, and by the late ’80s, JCM was turning into New Jack Swing. Troop, a quintet discovered by none other than previous JCJ inductee Gerald Levert, have the Levert-infused, end-of-’80s New Jack sound that you would expect from… well, a late-era Jheri Curl Music group that was discovered by Gerald Levert. And just look at Troop whipping their Jheri Curl mullets around in the video to “Mamacita!”

    You can check out our full playlists below, and we’ll see you next year for another Jheri Curl June!

  • Jheri Curl June: LeVert’s “Casanova”

    Jheri Curl June: LeVert’s “Casanova”

    Well, here we are: the last full week of Jheri Curl June. Since we try to go in rough chronological order, this is the week when things start to get a little tricky: as we went over last year, the latter half of the ’80s was a period of decline for jheri curl music, as the pop market shifted toward the fresher, more youthful sounds of hip-hop and New Jack Swing. It was not, however, an overnight process; and so the waning years of the decade offer many examples of transitional songs: retaining the DNA of classic jheri curl, while also beginning to show the effects of the emerging R&B mutations of the ’90s.

    “Casanova,” by Cleveland-based vocal group LeVert, is one such transitional song. Its parent album, 1987’s The Big Throwdown, was co-produced by Reggie Calloway: a member of the jheri-curl old guard, who dedicated readers may remember as a performer on Midnight Star‘s “No Parking on the Dance Floor” and a producer on “Meeting in the Ladies’ Room” by Klymaxx. So yes, those drums may have the soon-to-be-patented New Jack swingbeat; but the keyboard frills and clean guitar part are as jheri-curl as Ice Cube’s yearbook photo.

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