Dystopian Dance Party

Tag: rihanna

  • Jheri Curl June: Evan Rogers’ “Don’t Jump to Conclusions”

    Jheri Curl June: Evan Rogers’ “Don’t Jump to Conclusions”

    If we’ve learned anything from our writeup on L.A. Reid back in 2016, it’s that if there is a successful songwriter and producer from the last 30 or so years, they probably had a Jheri Curl album of their own in the mid-’80s. Well, here is Evan Rogers, one half of a hitmaking duo with Carl Sturken who would later produce for everyone from Evelyn “Champagne” King to Christina Aguilera, and even help to build thee Robyn Rihanna Fenty‘s career.

    Sturken and Rogers would eventually form the group Rhythm Syndicate and score a couple of hits in the ’90s, but back in 1985, Rogers released his solo album Love Games, which contains the very System-sounding song “Don’t Jump to Conclusions.” That’s our pick for the day, but the whole album is a bounty of mid-decade Jheri Curl Music: including “Full-Time Lover,” a slow jam duet with the aforementioned Evelyn King, and even a cover of Prince‘s “Private Joy.” Now that we’ve discovered Sturken and Rogers’ place in the Jheri Curl June Extended Universe, I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from them, whether as artists or producers.

    But for now, here’s this month’s playlist. We’ll be back on Monday for more Jheri Curl June!

  • Headbangers Book Club: Morris Day’s On Time (Part 2)

    Headbangers Book Club: Morris Day’s On Time (Part 2)

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    It’s #jhericurljune in July! After a brief delay due to COVID- and car theft-related trauma, we’re finally back with Part 2 of our deep dive on Morris Day‘s 2019 memoir On Time: A Princely Life in Funk! Join us as we celebrate one of the greatest cultural achievements of the late 20th century (“Fishnet”), and we’ll see you again in two weeks for the first half of Pamela Des Barres‘ I’m with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie!

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  • Podcast: (Zoloft) Zombie Nightmare

    Oh, hey, remember when we said we would watch the 1987 Jon Mikl Thor sorta-vehicle Zombie Nightmare and discuss it in time for Halloween? Well, here it is, just in time for…Thanksgiving. Yeah, we kinda screwed the pooch on that one, but bear with us, because we also have a lot to share about Zach’s 15 minutes of infamy with Team Breezy, the bizarre public meltdown of actor/model/singer/relationship guru/visual artiste Tyrese Gibson, and the forthcoming debut of Dystopian Dance Party in physical form! Also, we talk about our embarrassing physical and mental health ailments.

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  • Dystopian New Year’s Party Podcast: Our Favorite Songs of 2016

    So we’re a few days late, but better late than never, right? Here, finally, is our annual New Year’s Party podcast, in which we summarize our favorite songs of the last year as we make way for the new one. It’s a little less self-indulgent than the first one from 2015–by which I mean that it’s only two and a half hours, instead of two hours and 45 minutes. But we actually used real microphones this time, so at least you can hear what we’re saying! Check it out for the good music and eggnog-and-Hennessy-fueled rants; and then check out our extended Spotify and TIDAL playlists for more songs we didn’t have time to talk about, including tracks by A$AP Ferg and Future, A$AP Mob featuring Juicy J, Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne, Trinidad James featuring Mystikal and Lil Dicky, Nite-Funk, JEFF the Brotherhood, Frank Ocean, Mac Miller and Anderson .Paak, D.R.A.M. with Erykah Badu, 6LACK, the Weeknd and Daft Punk, and the Rolling Stones. So here’s to the one thing that made 2016 tolerable–the music–and maybe, just maybe, a 2017 that won’t suck literal ass.

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  • Jheri Curl June Special: L.A. Reid

    If you’re a regular Jheri Curl June reader, then you should already know that the first week of June holds special signifance in jheri curl music history. As we noted back in our very first Jheri Curl June Special of 2014, Prince’s birthday falls at the end of the week, on June 7. Just a day earlier, there’s also the birthday of megaproducer and Prince’s fellow Minneapolitan, James “Jimmy Jam” Harris III: the subject, with musical life partner Terry Lewis, of our 2015 JCJ Special. And if all that wasn’t enough, on the very same date as Prince, another Midwestern Jheri Curl architect was born in 1956: Cincinnati, Ohio’s own Antonio “L.A.” Reid.

    With all due respect to Mr. Reid–who, in my defense, has so much money that I sincerely doubt he cares–there’s a reason why we waited three years to enshrine him in the Jheri Curl June Hall of Fame. If, as I suggested last year, Prince was Jheri Curl’s principal architect and Jam and Lewis its most successful engineers, then Reid and his longtime colleague Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds were more like JCM’s property developers, building on the blueprints of the Minneapolis Sound to considerable success without ever really innovating on the formula. When we think about L.A. and Babyface, we think about…well, LaFace, a label synonymous with early ’90s R&B. Their achievements in the previous decade were decidedly more modest.

    But that doesn’t mean they weren’t, in their own way, important. Dystopian Dance Party has love for Reid’s and Edmonds’ early band the Deele, and last year we highlighted one of the pair’s late-era jheri curl productions, “Rock Steady” by the Whispers. There’s plenty of room in pop music for songs that refine and iterate on existing formulas, rather than reinventing the wheel; this is especially true in jheri curl music, a genre that existed pretty much exclusively as a vehicle for up-and-coming artists to bite from Prince and Michael Jackson. This, then, is our tribute to L.A. Reid: maybe not the most innovative of artists, but a shrewd businessman, a talented musician, and a gifted producer and songwriter who could, let’s not forget, buy and sell all of us in a second.

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