Pop's Newest Music Videos
My Suga
Yellow Butter Sunshine
"Everything I do, it comes from dance." This isn't a quote you'd expect
from a musician but it's the guiding force behind the artist known as Pop.
His new album, Caramel '76, channels many styles of music from soul,hip-hop,funk to
reggae to rock to pop but at its foundation, at the root of Pop's
ideology, is the art of dance. Think of hip-hop as a musical genre and a
culture that spawned from dance it was the "break" of the record that
the dancers loved and which motivated DJs to keep spinning them back to back
and Pop's words make sense. "Everything is from dance, from the movement,"
explains Pop. "Even when I'm playing the piano, it's like I'm dancing on
the keys. That's how I envision it."
It's Pop's story that gives Caramel '76 context, As a child his family
emigrated to the US from the Caribbean in 1976. He first came to New York
but would move later to Los Angeles. As a young teen on the West Coast,
Pop hooked up with a streetdance group called the Electric Boogaloos.
The youthful, rebellious click are famed for inventing "Poppin',"
the robotic-funk dance style associated with early hip-hop, and their
spectacular performances on the television show "Soul Train".
While in LA, Pop took a job dancing and acting on the television show Sesame
Street. The gig moved him back to New York at the age of 15. The time was
right. When he first emigrated, New York's concrete landscape was a Petri
dish for a new urban culture hip-hop. Now, that culture was in full bloom
and Pop was right in the middle of it.
He fell in with the Rock Steady Crew, whose members, Crazy Legs,Mr Wiggles, Fabel
and Mr.Freeze, met Pop dancing in Times Square. Hip-hop was
unrehearsed, says Pop. Sometimes it was raw street culture, other times it
was art-scene fetish object. "There was no blueprint for it,"
At 17, Pop left television and started dancing on concert tours, shows , videos-whatever work he could get.
He went on tour with Lionel Richie,performed with Herbie Hancock(Grammy's),and James Brown(Palladium).
The next year, Pop's career would take an even bigger step when he hooked up
with percussionist Sheila E who had been part of Lionel Richie's band. She had just been asked to go on tour with Prince
for Purple Rain. "That was an amazing time," Pop remembers. "I was young. Sheila would ask me to do a show-I'd run
around with my backstage pass and get into trouble. There was lots of craziness
happening everywhere. But Prince? I watched him every night."
It was that experience that galvanized Pop to make his own music.
Pop learned how to play a variety of instruments through dance As a dancer
on tour, he'd sometimes jam with the band, particularly towards the end of a
nation-wide trek.Pop says, "that's when the music
bug bit. I bought a drum machine. I already had a guitar. I just started playing
around with this stuff, getting bands together, playing by myself. Anything.
I just wanted to play."
Pop put together some of his own demos but what he really enjoyed was
working in the studio with other artists. Producer Joe "Da Butcher" Niccolo
(Cypress Hill, Fugees, House of Pain) served as a mentor for a couple of
years. Pop also worked with the Boo Yaa Tribe, who were signed to Island
Records, and that project led him to a fledgling, LA-based hip-hop group
named Cypress Hill. Pop served as a jack-of-all-trades studio consultant on
their breakthrough, self-titled debut, helping the group demo tracks in his
living room and working with live instruments, drum machines and samplers.
Pop would go on to work as a producer with other groups like Brand Nubian,
Third Bass and Fisbhone. "I like creating in collaboration," says Pop.
"I think you get the best ideas that way."
The early '90s were being good to Pop's own solo musical pursuits as a rock
frontman. He formed a band,released an album.
It was a rich mix of hip-hop rhythms, pop psychedelia and
spangled rock.Though Pop never really liked the album-it was critically acclaimed in the NY Times, and took Pop on tours
with artists like Beastie boys, Pearl Jam, and Fishbone. In 1992, his band backed
LL Cool J, De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest for the first hip-hop MTV
Unplugged. The now legendary performance (LL's "Mama Said Knock You Out")
was a prescient look to hip-hop's development toward live instruments.
The transition towards the mid-90s would be tougher. Pop took a dedicated
break from music to concentrate on other things in his life, catalyzed by
the loss of his younger brother, who died in a tragic car accident
Music was secondary to making his own life right. It took a handful
of years for Pop to move from a sense of despair to a position of strength.
As the '90s came to a close, Pop started to get back to music again. It came
through the same method it started with in the first place: dancing.
"Mr.Wiggles (of the Rock Steady Crew/Electric Boogaloos) called me and we just
talked about dancing. Within six months, he just asked me to do some shows with
him and I did, without thinking much about it. That's what got me back. And
then the music came naturally from that, just like it did in the beginning."
And his music is better for it. On Caramel '76, Pop utilizes the techniques
of mixing and matching styles he always relied on. A hip-hop sensibility
colors the record but it mixes in guitar riffs and bubbling funk tracks, a
roots vibe ("Reggae is country music to me," Pop says) with a progressive
musical approach. It's unlike any record you'll hear today.
"That's always been how I make music," Pop says. "Throw everything in the
pot and stir it up. That's the island in me, I guess."
