Word Up Wednesday Volume 4 – The Deele

Like most of our Word Up Wednesday artists, The Deele are in a class of bands that you don’t know you have ever heard until you accidentally discover them in the free bin of a book store basement and are hit with a tidal wave of recognition from samples and techniques that resound through today’s popular music.

The Deele are the first musical group to bring together R&B powerhouses Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, and Antonio “LA” Reid who would both eventually leave the group to start LaFace Records which is responsible for releasing some of the most seminal R&B music of the 90’s.

From 1981 through 1988, The Deele’s original line-up released albums regularly under the SOLAR record label which was the pet project of Dick Griffey, founder of Soul Train Records and Don Cornellius, host of the eponymous Soul Train television show.

SOLAR is also responsible for launching the careers of genre defining artists of the period including Shalamar, Dynasty, Klymaxx, the Whispers, Lakeside, Midnight Star and Calloway.

The first single by the group was 1981’s “Body Talk” and was characterized by heavy synthesizer pumps, a killer bass groove, and a lyrical meter that more than closely resembled another synthesizer heavy funk hit – “The Walk” by Minneapolis based The Time. “Body Talk” so deftly mimics “The Walk” that The Deele go so far as to reference the latter in the opening stanza of the former:

Just because I shake and party
And roll my sexy body
Dont mean that I’m tryin to tease
Its called body talk
Its not like the walk
cause this time
You’re wearin blue jeans

Which is a thinly veiled slight targeted toward “The Walk” which employs blue jeans as the subject of a running joke throughout the song. Beginning with this phrase:

The days of dancing in one place are gone.
And honey, you know you can’t dance with them tight jeans on.
If you try to cop a dip, you trip, slip, and fall.
Walking’s for the cool baby, put on a camisole.

The comparisons don’t end there. Beyond the dual imperatives to either “talk your body” or “walk your body” respectively, both tracks bring together multiple genres of music that became the massive, chart topping, hit machine, super-genre known as Electro Funk. The involved genres include (but are not limited to) Funk, R&B, Soul, Electronic, Synth Pop, Jazz, Hip Hop, and the very first inklings of New Jack Swing.

Although “Body Talk” is arguably more aggressive in its meter, instrumentation, and production techniques (read: less subtle) than “The Walk”, the similarities definitely tread water in the ever tenuous musical Bermuda Triangle where the rivers of tribute, satire, and plagiarism combine.

Despite this potential embarassment, the success of “Body Talk” was instantaneous, and led the group to create several more chart toppers throughout the decade including “Video Villain”, “Hip Chick”, “Shoot em up Movies” and “Two Occasions”, the last of which would go on to be noticeably sampled in Mariah Carey’s 2007 come-back anthem “We Belong Together.”

Although there are many more things to be said about The Deele, the music, as always, speaks for itself. They pumped out the jams.

Download: The Deele – Body Talk (zShare)
Download: The Deele – Hip Chick (zShare)
Download: The Deele – Video Villain (zShare)
Download: The Deele – Two Occasions (zShare)
Download: The Time – The Walk (zShare)

~ by Reno on October 1, 2008.