Right On, Time

I hope everyone thoroughly enjoyed the albums I posted a few days ago. Today's post has been brought to you by two of the 5th Dimension's former singers, husband and wife Marilyn and Billy. After much success with the 5th Dimension in the early 70s, the pair left the group in 1975 to establish their own careers, releasing this joint album in the process.

This album from 1976 features the popular cut "Nothing Can Stop Me", which has been sampled ad nauseum on the mixtape/underground rap circuit. Less notably, but certainly just as deservedly, the song was also sampled by Jaheim on his debut single "Could It Be" from 2001. Nice.

The lights are going out in this place real soon. You've been warned. (download)

Sista, Sista

I've been on a 90's R&B kick all last week, shout-out to my girl Nately.

A good friend of mine has a bad habit of using hyperbole in almost everything he's describing. When he recommends a restaurant, for example, he'll go overboard and be like "yo fam it's got the best food I ever had in my life, you'll love it". Then I'll go there and the food may actually be decent, or sometimes not at all, but either way I'll feel a tad let down for it not being nearly as enthralling as he makes it out to be.

I tend to scold him sometimes for going overboard with that, but this time I've gotta take a cue for him and say this: the album to your right is by far the best, I wanna say the definitive 90's girl-group R&B album. Yep, I said it. And the craziest thing is that it was never released. Like my instrumental album Dream, Extinguished, it was shelved at the last minute; in their case, due to internal conflict not only within the group but between the label.

Missy Elliott, of whom I used to be a huge fan, spearheaded the Sista quartet during the Jodeci craze of the early 90's. Penning not only the songs for this album, but ghostwriting a few joints for Jodeci and Mary J. Blige as well (word has it she and Timbaland may have helped with some of What's the 411?), Missy got her start in this group, often dubbed as the "female Jodeci", before launching her super-successful solo career in '96. The other three members of Sista disappeared off of the face of the earth once the group dissolved with the rest of the Swing Mob/Bassment crew (Ginuwine, Playa, Tweet, Timbaland & Magoo), who broke from the camp amidst DeVante's shenanigans and started their own careers.

Every. Joint. On. This. Album. Knocks. I hate to use hyperbole but this is truly (to me) the best female R&B album of the 90's. There's only a very small handful of albums I can play front to back without skipping tracks, and this is one of them. I guess it makes it even better that the album unfolds as a sort of story as it progresses, from the Sista clan meeting DeVante for the first time (who sucks his teeth an uncomfortable amount of times throughout the LP) to finding love at the end. For vintage Timbaland beats (he didn't produce the entire thing, though) and early Missy raps (she's been doin' that "my booty go ba-boomp-a-boomp-boomp" stuff for ages, as you can clearly hear), look no further than this lost gem from 1994.

It sucks this album never saw a proper release, but say hey: that's what I'm here for. (download)

Fragile Rock

All better!

Thanks to everyone for the get-well-soons and tips for fighting this nasty cold I had. In the end, it took a few gallons of orange juice, a whole box of green tea and seventeen sips of Robitussin to get over it. Meh.

Today's post is brought to you by an oft-overlooked singer from the same era -- and songwriting team, for that matter -- that brought you Control and N.E. Heartbreak. The career of Detroit's Cherrelle will probably be remembered best by her duets with Alexander O'Neal, specifically "Saturday Love" (you know the chorus: "Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sat-ur-daaaaaaaaaaaay...") Cherrelle had moderate success in the '80s, with all of her LPs released during that time selling at least gold (remember when people sold 500,000 copies of their album?).

Unfortunately, Cherrelle -- whose cousin Pebbles would later create and manage TLC -- never really attained the same amount of success of her peers; some believe it had a little bit to do with her live performances, which some say would've been so much better if only Cherrelle knew how to dance as well as her choreographed counterparts at the time. Others say she's been on a decline since leaving the Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis camp in the early '90s. Being that as it may, she still put out some great music, with her latest album being released in 1999.

This is one of the few records in my stash that I actually didn't buy; I got it from my mama's collection when I first started pillaging record stores around 2001-2002, and even then didn't actually use it until four or so years later when I flipped "Stay With Me" for Dream, Interrupted's "I'm Not Ready". Fragile would sit in my bin until a year or so later, when I decided to blow the dust off of "I Need You Now" to create "Hurt No More", which made its way onto the never-ever-ever-ever released instrumental album, Dream, Extinguished.

But more than making beats, albums like this remind me a lot of my childhood, when life was carefree and R&B music was still actually of quality. Good luck finding any songs these days that don't reference "humps", "grinding", or "poppin' that coochie". Yeesh. Get a room! Fragile isn't very expensive; cop it from your local mom-and-pop or on eBay for a couple of bones. (download)

Twist and Shout

Two wonderful albums. The same unimaginative name. Both released in 1976. Which one should I post?

Oh, if you're wonderin' why I'm Shout-ing, I'd like to inform you all that I am no longer umemployed. Day jobs suck, but I gotta eat!