Hi Kids!
Yep, I disappeared. I told you this might happen if I got depressed, and guess what? I did! You’re welcome for being consistent.
I’m better now. Shout out to my therapist, my psychiatrist, my partner, PBS, David Bowie, and my Mom for helping me stay afloat during my most recent bout of the bluesies. It takes a village, people! Anyways, let’s get on with it.
A few years ago, I profiled an incredible wedding band named Liquid Pleasure. During one of my many conversations with the band’s enigmatic leader singer, Kenny Mann, we started discussing his favorite songs and bands. We both loved R&B more than we felt other people could understand. I told him my first concert was Janet Jackson’s Velvet Rope tour. He told me he used to be in a band that was modeled off of Cameo. “Wait, who is Cameo?” I asked him. In the pause that followed, I imagine he was debating whether or not to hang up the phone. Instead, he demanded I listen to “Candy.”
“Candy” doesn’t just begin; it attacks. It grabs you by the collar and spins you into an arid, hollow room of sounds. There are programmed drums, some funky slappa-da-bass playing, the sustained, almost irritating, ring of a high-pitched synthesizer, and, off in the distance, an echoey, conga-meets-cowbell beat that randomly interrupts the song’s maniacal attempt at establishing a melody. And that’s all before the horns and vocals kick in.
God, I love the vocals. Cameo’s lead singer, Larry Ernest Blackmon, has a stylish dialect that completely disregards consonants. In Blackmon’s mouth, “Candy” is “cahn-daaayyy; “do” is “deeeuuuww;” you” is “yeeeeeh-oouuu;” and so forth and so on. If you’re only going to listen to 5 seconds of “Candy,” please make it the moment when Blackmon extends the simple phrase “real shy” into an operatic catwalk strut.
Listening to “Candy” for the first time, I immediately recognized the bizarre conga-cowbell beats that blare out from the back of the mix. “Fuck me,” I thought. “This is Loverboy!” For those of you who didn’t spend 2001 watching Total Request Live, “Loverboy” is a song by Mariah Carey. It’s the lead single from the soundtrack to her underappreciated, arthouse film “Glitter.” “Loverboy,” as I found out that day, is built atop a near-total sampling of “Candy.”
Critics hated “Loverboy.” They described it as noisy and disjointed and said there was too much sounding coming from all over the place. Some nerdboy at The Guardian labeled it a traffic jam. Fans didn’t like it much either. “Loverboy” didn’t come close to receiving the same kind of inescapable airplay that Carey’s previous singles benefitted from. Yup, everyone hated this song—except ol’ Abby. “Loverboy” is my absolute, do-not-@-me-about-this, favorite song of Mariah’s. If I had to kill off “Always Be My Baby,” “Heartbreaker,” and “My All” just to save “Loverboy,” I would do it. That’s how much Da Brat rapping about having her tangerines butterfingered means to me.
I think the main reason I love “Loverboy” so much is because I have ADHD. Let me explain: The smart-ass who said “Loverboy” was a traffic jam is kinda right. The song has no discernible melody. It’s basically just a compilation of noises atop of which noted lesbian, Da Brat, rhymes about getting railed by Ludacris while Mariah Carey scats incoherently alongside her. Competing rhythmic elements prevent a predominant tempo from asserting itself. It’s a mess.
Or is it a feast? My easily addled brain lives for this kind of stuff. What some people might think of as distracting, I tend to find immersive. Chewing through hooks, interruptions, and key changes keeps me engaged, whereas my mind slips right through a perfectly blended melody. Loverboy” and “Candy” give me a 1,000 opportunities to wonder how in the hell someone makes a sound; infinite reasons to rewind and ask is that a cowbell or a conga? And, most importantly, endless excuses to wistfully sigh to myself: “Da Brat … girl … why?”
If you like what you read here, tell your friends! Also, if you’re got some time to kill, I recently wrote about Lucy Dacus and a young trans artist named FEWOCiOUS (we love the kids!) in Esquire.