Lisa Lisa And Cult Jam With Full Force
The mother of them all. Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam with Full Force's "I Wonder If I Take You Home" is often cited, along with Shannon's "Let the Music Play" and Jellybean's "The Mexican," as one of the first freestyle tracks to gain recognition. Ms. Lisa's winsome bleat is the perfect expression of the hard teenage realities she faces in the song, which is a more lyrically graphic update of the sturdy themes in "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" Meanwhile the melody (such that it is) and the beats goose the track into a giddy, cosmopolitan distillation of urban youth. The huge single "All Cried Out" follows up on "I Wonder If I Take You Home": shedidtake him home, and lived to regret it. Also contains the essential early freestyle smash, "Can You Feel the Beat."--John Sanchez