Tuesday 7 June 2016

Sleepin' Sidewayz

Egyptian Lover - I Cry (Night After Night)
(From 1983-1988 album; 2016)


Precisely 30 years before YG rapped about wakin' up with a boner/goin' to bed a loner in 2014, his combination of bedtime horniness/loneliness on the west coast was anticipated and fully articulated on Egyptian Lover's I Cry (Night After Night). 32 years after the song's release in which Big 'Gypt has presumably experienced the domestic horrors of a girlfriend who snores or 3:AM arguments over duvet-hogging, I Cry (Night After Night) now has an official video. This shit was shot to promote his recent 1983-1988 anthology album on Stones Throw Records and therein lies the problem: the Min of L.A Bass & Bump tinkered with perfection by extending certain instrumental sections of his original song before amplifying + compressing certain sounds in the mix. The result? He ended up George Lucas-ing his own masterpiece. Damn, homie.

Fortunately, Greg The Pharaoh redeemed his act of fiddling while Egypt burns by also revamping Kinky Nation (Kingdom Kum) for the 1983-1988 project. As O.G King Freako admitted in the album's liner notes, the original 1986 recording was somewhat of a experiment with a drum machine he was unfamiliar with, so for the anthology he's removed the original drum-track and replaced it with his trusty 808. Exactly 30 years on, a passable filler track from his One Track Mind LP now has more bump than the Great Pyramid of Giza. Maybe KRS Nutso was right about ancient Egyptians being time-travellers from a futuristic civilisation of alien blk ppl after all?

Related: When you see a Devil shelve him.

4 comments:

  1. I should add that George Lucas is mentioned only as an example of someone messing up their own work. Fuck Star Wars on every level.

    (S/O to American Graffiti tho innit.)

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  2. Dam Funk in the vid

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  3. Egyptian Lover looks better now than he did in the 80s.

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