Com
room
On h
Hom Front
Danny Glover will finally get
k) ICC the fruit of his hard wo
be will repoJ1Cdly JOOY'C next
month into a be' pent
o year moodeling.
1be Pranciaoo bome,-a
6,(0) uare fOOt Victorian,
built near the t\m ofthc cenmry.
He bought it )UJI ago for
$1 million.
CA Want
J. Gill ckl
After Motown filed suit
lpimt MCA for S70 million,
accusing the label of destroying
evidence, dumping Motown
product and witbolding mil­
liom, MCA bit back.
The company i uing
. Motown for $75 million for
reck:J. tramitionofi distribu­
tion and manufacturing busi-
. In an earlier agreement,
MCA igned Johnny Gill,
DIana and the Boys to
Momwn. t MCA wan them
C&C F ory
Su p nd
'Operation
1.00 like � OlC Music
F�ry· dosing up operations.
According to recent reports,
Zelma am Freedom have gore
their sepamte ways. It' not yet
tmwn if the split· permanent,
but Robert Cvilles and David
Olle already mve a new project
ontbc�
Freedom WilIams is also
working on his own album for
. Sony MlBic. With any luck, his
fblt sinp wD1 be out in June.
Freedom ys his new music
will be more treet oriented, but
will have "a little bit of every­
thing."
Get
tedl
There are male rappers and
there are female rappers, but
very rarely do you fiJ¥I a group
in which gmbers .of the op­
posite sex co-exist, unless
you're hip 10 Arrested Develop­
ment. TItree Years, FiveMonths
tJNl 1M> Days ill 1M Life of. ....
the title of their debut album,
released on Clrysalis, is burst­
ing with opinion, awareness and
perspective. (InddBallUy, Ibe dde
relen to Ibe IJDOUDt ct time .-cd
beIweeD tho forma1ioo d. PIP aad
•• __ ct NCORi .........
ClaryIaIit).
The message Arrested
Development· trying 10 relay?
Speech, the group's
writer/produccr believes that
human spiritual deVelopment
proceeds from the beastly k) the
; they are Q)bOCtDCd widl
the Bl ck community, pro­
country life and pro-African .
self«1ennination. The power­
fullyria and energy put forth by
this group of six members are
iDJpiring. brutally I¥>nest mI-
if all goee pJanocd - aeate
abe [or im-
provement
, - oompled by K. Ber1ca
_ _peel" oontrlbutora:
RIdoSoope .•• T'twColumn &
Conine ( nd- n.eoen-)
I BASEIIEAD I (I-r): K Ith LQfton, Brian Hendrix, Bill Conway and Mlchaellvey.
"Get up, get on up," drawls the
voice at the beginning of'Play With
Toys, Basehead's debut for Imago
Records. The mUsic is spare: just a ,
guitar, bass and drums, plucking
along in a laid-back country &
western hootenanny. "I feel like
being a sex machine, " continues the
voice. Hoots and claps are audible
in the background. A few questions
arise in the listener's mind at this
point. Is this a live recording of a '
Texas campfire jamboree? Or i it
really a band called Jethro and the
Graham Crackers playing Soul
Night, as the mysteriously insouciant
voice suggests?
Moments later, all questions arise
squashed when a linking but per­
sistently funky beat kicks in and
Micbael Ivey, the man behind
Basehead, reveal hi true purpose:
to challenge the world of hip-hop by
combing his drowsy, gravelly
baritone voice with live instrumenta­
tion. Add whistling turntable
cratches in the place where the
guitar solo hould go, a minimalist
touch of' mbourine, and you have
Buehead' first ingle,"2000 Be. "
Beneath a half-spoken chorus of
"two-thousand brain cells ago," the
b -driven groove, reminiscent of
omething James Brown might have
done to the "Peter Gunn Theme,"
shutl1es along Ii e a B-Boy version
o walking twelve bar blue . "It
the humor, the DJ stuff, the hi�OOp
bea ,the beer stuff, a little of every­
thing, ay Ivey. "It bows people
what Basehead is all about."
Indeed, but w�t is Baaehead all
about? Upon first listening all we
Stones, Prince, Led Zep, James
Brown and early MTV," he says. "I
"I liked • Basehead' because
. it was a little risky. It's
I. memorable and it could mean a
lot of things, comments Ivey."
know for sure is that the band like
to get funky without breaking a
sweat. An unprecedented amalpm
of music, Baseheacl dares k) uggest
that intricate mel odie , complex
chord change , and a relaxed voice
can co-exist with a hip-hop beat,
played live. And Basehead's live
performance is an effortless and
dynamic extension of the record's
smooth groove.
Ivey joined on ta by Brian
Hel¥lrix on drums (a hometown high
school friend who also contributed to
the Play With Toys recording), Keith
Lofton on guitar and Bill Conway on
b (who hooked up with Ivey while
at Howard University.)
BASEIIEAD' motto might
well be, " peak Y and carry a big
beat." "If the music is good, I don't
care whether I'm uppo d to like it
or not. I w influenced by the
went about trying to educate myself
in many different styles of music. It
didn't bother me that there w peer
me DOt 10 listen to cenaln type
of music-in my , m\8ic that
didn't get played on Blac radio. I
just aid, I'm ot going to limit
myself."
On the choice of a band name,
Ivey comments, "I liked 'Basehead'
beca it w a little . ky. It'
mol'lbleand it co d � a lot of
A twenty two-year-Old graduate
of Howard University, Ivey was
raised in Pittsburg, and has lived in
Wasbj.ngton, DC for the past five
years. After graduating with a dee.
gree in tllm, he retreated to a local
tudio here be '�rded Play With
Toy. . The ult a ne sound,
somewhere between the deep­
throated eductivenes of Barry
White and the impish funk of Prince.
- - � �- - - - - -
"I was trying to make tuff that I
like," say Ivey. "And I generally
don't like what' on the radio. So I
was basically trying to book up with
something that I enjoyed, and I
hoped that other people would enjoy
it too. It's for people who are look­
ing for something a little different
than what's on the radio.
AFTER BEING turned down by
one notable hip-bop label who. felt it
would be too difficult to 'market
Basehead's unusual sound, in 1991
Ivey truck a deal with Emigre,
small, highly selective label based in
California. Within weeks of the
release of Play With Toys, the buzz
began. After the CMJ Report
decided to feature Basehead on their
cover, Emigre besieged with
phone call from every major label,
all demanding to hear the innovative
new album that had managed to set
hip-hop on its ear for the first time in
years. In 1992, Imago uccctSSfully
concluded negotiation with
'ehead and will now make Play
With ToY' widely aval for tbe
first time ever.
Iti n'tjustBasehead' innovative
sound that make Play With Toys
such a rarity in the htp-bop world.
Although it is far from being a retro
concept album, i integrated themes
and interconnected sonp give it a
rare cohesive . "When I made
the album," ys Ivey, "I tried 10
make it fit together in orne way in-
tead of just havfng a bunch of
singles. Some songs were 0001 but
didn't fit in with the concept, 10 I
didn't put them in."
"Overall, I didn't want an album
that w all poli tical lOngs or all love
songs. I do have political thoughts,
but I didn't want the album to make
it seem like I bad them twenty-four
hours a day, you know. I'm jus
trying to make an honest album, no
cater to some fonnula. like in "0
To My Favorite Beer," I did tbat in
uch a way that you, might think it
was a love song if you just lilten to
't and didn't know what tbe title WII.
But I made it about beer. When
people write love ongs, often real,
relationships are more complex
their songs, but I wanlecl to make •
really ho t album." . •
One of the more bone t love·
OIl Play Wida To, "Br�:uJ
New Day," in which lvey laments
having been thrown· back into the
game/buying drinks, getting drlnb,
silly dates, silly dames," while a
friend advise Ivey not to feel blue
and consider the positives, such
beina ble to break wiod wbcDcver
he pi . Even lly, bey tile
silver lining. "I can go out with aU
my buddie, nd get drunk 'til
tum blue," he deUvers in cbarlc:­
teristic dead-pan.
"When I w in the studio, people
kept com:ng in and Una me t
dkIn'tlmowwbatl do It
my fult time makIn& an alb
, BASEHEAD,