Why do you think that the classic jams from the late 1970s and early 1980s have continued to endure thirty years on? Because it’s real music. Real songs. Real uplifting, spirited music that took you to another level. We’ve come away from that in a big way. I think people are eager to get back to that—it made you move and feel great. I don’t have anything against hip-hop, but I think authentic R&B and soul music has taken a backseat to it in terms of representation. .
instead of action. [ laughs ] We sat down at the piano and created “Somebody Else’s Guy.”
Did you have anything to do with Frederick “M.C. Count” Linton’s rap version of “I’m Somebody Else’s Guy”? No, I had nothing to do with that. I went through an almost sixteen-year lawsuit. We didn’t get anything from the first ten years of the life of the song. We’re just now beginning to see anything properly from it, which is nothing compared to the first ten or twelve years of its life. Was it daunting covering Minnie Riperton and Rotary Connection’s “I Am the Black Gold of the Sun” on Masters at Work’s Nuyorican Soul ? I never knew that the song was a cover! I didn’t even know the song existed. I thought it was a song [that] Masters at Work had created. I heard the original version—and the only reason that I heard it was because the company that I was with received an injunction from the real owners of the master. It was never cleared by Masters at Work, so I was put in a very catch-22 situation. It’s been resolved now and everything is cool.
This article originally appeared in Wax Poetics Issue 45, 2011.
67
Made with FlippingBook - PDF hosting