Dap Dippin
Well, the cat's out of the bag. No longer do up-and-coming soul bands strive to sound like the antiseptic Brand New Heavies or, worse yet, insipid Jamiroquai. The Poets of Rhythm proved that rough could still sound good as far back as 1993. Phillipe Lehman and Gabe Roth founded Desco Records in the mid-1990s because they knew that a certain subset of America's funk-buying public would die for a bass that was plucked and not slapped. For drums that danced around rhythms instead of avoiding them.But oh, what a monster they spawned! It seems that every white boy with a 4-track cassette recorder heardBrainfreeze, ordered Volumes 1-10 ofThe Sound of Funkcomps and figured he could form a band to record with the chutzpah of Mickey and the Soul Generation and the Ebony Rhythm Band. But grasshopper forgot that those late-'60s funk legends had musical prowess. Grasshopper forgot that they all looked up to James Brown, who recorded ballads alongside the hardest funk instrumentals. Thank God Roth and Neal Sugarman (of boogaloo funksters the Sugarman Three) didn't forget. Thank God they formed Daptone Records and recorded —gasp— an album. Not a series of unrelated songs, but a string of winners, plucked out by a bona fide soul revue backing up dynamite Desco alumnus Sharon Jones. This album is as much about them as it is about Ms. Jones' and her ferocious vocals. Take one listen to their cover of Janet Jackson's "What Have You Done for Me Lately?" and you'll know why.Egon--From URB Magazine