Word: hops
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...When hip-hop came into its own about a decade ago, soul music lost a bit of its soul. Hip-hop took with it a chunk of the fight-the-power spirit that had once belonged primarily to soul and rhythm and blues. Back in the day--as the phrase goes--Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder sang of urban blight and soul power, about disintegrating families and spiritual transcendence, about "what's going on" and living in a "pasttime paradise...
...even in the age of hip-hop, a fair number of musicians, including the Artist Formerly Known As Prince, have managed to create challenging soul. Most recently, there has been a smallish wave from Britain of what could be termed alternative soul, or neo-soul--music by performers who take the traditional songwriting structures and approaches associated with soul and R. and B. and tweak them with twisting rhythms, eccentric melodies and skewed lyrics. That English wavelet includes the solo performers Seal, Des'ree and Tricky and the group Portishead...
What the Pharcyde did provide, however, was good background music for a mellow dance party. And although the Pharcyde got the crowd moving to the bass beats and rhymes despite the cool, rainy day, almost any hip-hop group could have made the crowd dance. The group never really formed a definitive sound; when the Pharcyde had little innovative or exciting talent to explore, the concert failed to satisfy the listener...
...Council went through a human rights controversy, money considerations and other problems to get the Pharcyde. Probably because they thought they were doing what was best for the students and, deceivingly, the Pharcyde seemed a good choice. A press release describes the Pharcyde as "one of hip-hop's few originators." Whoever wrote this little lie must have smoked as much marijuana as the band had before the performance. The Pharcyde is an ordinary hip-hop group with a few songs that made them popular. The live performance revealed little extraordinary talent and disappointed the people who were expecting...
...what hoofing! The dancers, all men, cross and recross the stage with demon drive. The sounds vary as strains of jazz, blues, hip-hop and gospel interweave. This is a very raucous show, about as far removed from the classic buck-and-wing as tap can get. The performers slap down the beat hard, and if that doesn't rattle the eardrums, they are miked at the ankle. It doesn't make for subtlety, but for visceral excitement...