eMusic Review 0
Kraftwerk's rather bizarre influence on the African-American communities of New York, Miami and Detroit has been obsessively chronicled and endlessly examined, but much less well-known is that the spectre of Düsseldorf's showroom dummies haunted the periphery of the early LA hip-hop scene as well. Like Detroit's Techno musicians, Rodger Clayton's Uncle Jamm's Army, a crew of DJs who played parties throughout LA, connected the dots between P-Funk and Kraftwerk and gave birth to the city's electro-funk style. One of the lieutenants of Uncle Jamm's Army, Egyptian Lover (born Greg Broussard) struck out on his own with the cult classic On the Nile. The overwrought, faintly Germanic vocals, clipped drum machine programming and vaguely sci-fi, future primitivist concepts of “Egypt, Egypt” and “My House (On the Nile)” are closer to the proto-Techno style of Detroit's Cybotron than to either the East Coast electro style or the more straightforward electro-funk of Dr. Dre's early group World Class Wreckin 'Cru. “What Is a DJ If He Can't Scratch?,” however, is a demand for traditional hip-hop virtues even though he was helping to banish the DJ with his synths and drum machines. “Girls,” meanwhile, rewrites the homoeroticism of Kraftwerk's “Tour De France”… read more »
