Monie Love: "Born 2 B.R.E.E.D."

3 March 1993

"It's about doing the right thing in relationships and bringing up kids — but there's no preaching, just an immediate tune that grabs you and won't let go."

— Tony Cross

Since his untimely death in the spring of 2016, Prince has been showered with arguably more love and good vibes than he ever enjoyed while he was still alive. As is normal when a giant in the pop world perishes, his music returned to radio and his albums returned to the charts. Many fans realised that they cared for him far more than they ever had known. We would've been even more overwhelmed by public grief had his passing not occurred in the same year as fellow stars David Bowie, Leonard Cohen and George Michael. (The fact that I'm quite sure there were other stars who died that year but can't recall who they were says all you need to know)

I have to say that hyperbole surrounding Prince's posthumous legacy has taken a backseat to how that public reacted (and continues to react) to Bowie's death just three months' earlier. Yes, there was a headline about the Purple One being the "greatest recording artist of all-time" but it was isolated. Revisionism has been kept to a minimum. That said, you don't hear much about how increasingly irrelevant he was becoming over the course of the nineties or that he was mired in something of a creative slump. Lovesexy had been a minor let down following the universally praised Sign O the Times. A year later Batman came out and suddenly its predecessor seemed a lot stronger. But at least people like me bought it. The same can't be said for Graffiti Bridge, the soundtrack to a film no one saw.

1991's Diamonds and Pearls took Prince back into the charts where he belonged but it was clear that he was no longer leading the way. New Jack swing had come about independent of him, even if it leaned heavily upon his influence. Hip hop, however, he didn't seem to have an answer for. What he did still have was a command of the studio and instincts for great pop. Which is how one of his finest works of the entire decade was one in which the spotlight was placed on someone else.

As a quirky British rapper who was respected though not as commercially successful as she probably ought to have been, Monie Love doesn't seem to be the sort who Prince would choose to work with. Then again, neither did The Bangles and who doesn't love the Prince-composed "Manic Monday"? Similarly, there's the late Sinead O'Connor whose rendition of "Nothing Compares 2 U" is simply one of the greatest singles ever released. Yet, these were both numbers written by Prince but produced by others and recorded in studios which weren't in Minnesota. "Born 2 B.R.E.E.D." is a full-on collaboration with the Artist Soon to Be Known as Prince in control.

At first, the Prince-influence is scarcely noticeable. It is only after discovering his involvement that his touches reveal themselves, namely the chugging guitar that had been a staple of his work throughout the eighties. While "Manic Monday" and "Nothing Compares 2 U" do sound like songs he could have recorded himself (probably because they were), "Born 2 B.R.E.E.D." could never have been released by anyone but Monie Love.

A while back, I did a two-part series exploring what it meant to be "Beatle-esque" and "Princian", via back-to-back Singles of the Fortnight from Prince disciples Wendy & Lisa and Cat. I didn't do a great job and they now read like I had some ideas but left them unfinished (not unlike much of what you'll find in this space). Hopefully, this post will address some of the unanswered questions. While Wendy Melvoin, Lisa Coleman and Cat Glover were all members of his inner-circle and, thus, caught in the shadow of the great man, Monie Love previously had next to nothing to do with him, beyond, perhaps, liking his music when she was growing up in south London. True Princian traits of creativity, self-belief and stubborness are best found in those not in thrall to him.

Early nineties' hip hop was in something of a no win situation: it was a genre that seemed to be taken far too seriously or not seriously enough. You make hard-hitting rap music about life on the streets and that "message" that no one ever explains and it's far too earnest to make for an enjoyable listen; turn it into a joke and it can't possibly be taken seriously. The involvement of Prince was enough for everyone to take "Born 2 B.R.E.E.D." for what it was, a catchy and fun rap about making sure kids get educated or something. You might expect a motherly Monie to have lost more of her youthful spirit from earlier efforts such as "Grandpa's Party", "Monie in the Middle" and "It's a Shame" but she's still able to have a laugh while delivering a "message".

Sadly, Monie Love's recording career was pretty much finished by the time "Born 2 B.R.E.E.D." had wrapped up its modest four week stay on the Top 40 (even if the peak of number eighteen for a fortnight was fair enough). Though her presence in the US was minimal, she had relocated to the States by this point which probably didn't help her fortunes back in Britain. (It doesn't appear she made a Top of the Pops appearance in 1993 and there doesn't seem to have been much UK promotion done at all; it's actually a wonder this single managed to do as well as it did) On the other hand, having more of a footing in America likely made sense since hip hop allies De La Soul, The Jungle Brothers and A Tribe Called Quest were all based there. In any case, she must love it over there since she now calls Atlanta home where she hosts a radio show. It's just too bad she didn't have more rap hits in her. I guess she should've give her pal Prince a call.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Jamiroquai: "We're Too Young to Die"

Jay Kay has a douchy name and he looked like a bit of a douche so his music must've been just the sort of thing for the douche bag in your life but that wasn't always the case. Those of us who only knew Stevie Wonder from "I Just Called to Say I Love You", "Ebony and Ivory", "Part-Time Lover" and his guest spot on The Cosby Show wouldn't necessarily have guessed that Kay was copying the great man's imperial period of the seventies actually thought he was pretty cool. Even if we were aware of the similarity, at least he wasn't aping Michael Jackson. Now that I'm older and I have Innervisions, Songs in the Key of Life and the rest I'm less impressed by Jamiroquai. I have a lot of time for middle class Brit-Funk but I'll take the warm, enthusiastic chops of Brand New Heavies instead. But like him not, that douche sure did a mean Stevie impersonation.

Monie Love: "Monie in the Middle"

11 July 1990

"Monie delivers a high speed rap in which she pretends to be a schoolgirl in love with, but not doing so well at it because at the same time she's being pursued by a complete lunkhead who's totally and pathetically in love with her, thus leaving her "in the middle"."

— William Shaw

"I see hip hop today as school", Monie Love told someone from Smash Hits' Bitz section in the summer of 1989. "My teachers are Public Enemy, my classmates are the likes of The Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, Boogie Down Productions, MC Mellow, MC Lyte..." She was righter than she knew. If Chuck D was that stern Language Arts instructor who you ended up learning far more from than you ever would have expected, then The Jungle Brothers were those unruly boys who never gave Mr. D a moment's peace. If Flavor Flav was the popular Social Studies teacher who coached the hopeless junior boys volleyball team and ran a board games club in his classroom over the lunch break, then the members of De La Soul were the lads who got involved in activities but never bothered doing their homework (just my kind of people!). If Professor Griff was the scary librarian with sketchy views on race and gender, then Monie Love was that crotchety old fool's worst nightmare. (I can keep this going too: if PE's anonymous armed guards were the home ec and shop teachers no one cared about, then MC Mellow and MC Lyte were the students who no one recognized while flipping through the yearbook; I can't seem to come up with student-teacher comparisons to Terminator X though)

Of course, what Love probably meant was that she and her Daisy Age rap cohorts were learning from Public Enemy but I like to think that they were acquiring lessons and skills from them while disregarding others. That's an effective student-teacher relationship. I hope she has subsequently become the teacher herself, passing on what she learned to the next generation. She'd have a lot to contribute to a group of impressionable hip hop youngsters and that's not even touching the fact that she had a lot to say about her education at the time.

"Monie in the Middle" is one of many hip hop singles of the time with a video set in a school (just off the top of my head there's also De La Soul's "Me, Myself and I" and Young MC's "Principal's Office" but I'm certain there are plenty more). But where the majority of the others deal with students having troubles with their teachers, this one concerns that worst kind of classroom love triangle: Monie in between a "knucklehead" loser who wants to be with her and the "homeboy" who apparently likes her back. I say "apparently" because she's composing letters to him just as the jerk she spurned was doing for her — and there's nothing in the lyrics to suggest that he hadn't "scrunched up the letter" in turn. Is Monie so obsessed about the silly twit in her class with a crush because she sees a bit of herself in him? (There probably wasn't much she could learn from teachers Mr. D, Mr. Flav and Griff the Giant Git)

In any case, the song is a good warning call for guys like myself who could get a little too hung up on girls that clearly had no interest in them. (In my experience, however, not a whole lot changed even after some began to reciprocate my desires) Sadly, few of us teenage dweebs were unable to heed it because not enough people bothered to go out and buy it. It seems hard to believe that "Monie in the Middle" didn't even get a nominal Top 40 placing. Were spotty British youths turned off by her being so forthright with them? If that is the case, then where were the empowered girls who should've felt that they had an ally? (I never descended so low that I followed anyone into the "ladies' bathroom" but I'm sure more than enough sad types who'd now be regarded as incels would've done so) Overt feminism in pop seldom does as well as it deserves and this was no exception.

With some stellar production from Andy Cox and David Steel of Fine Young Cannibals (possibly returning the favour from Love's excellent rap on the excellent remix of FYC's 1989 hit "She Drives Me Crazy") and samples from jazz and samba, "Monie in the Middle" is a fantastic single and should have at least matched the Top 20 performances of the so-so "Grandpa's Party" and the marvelous "It's a Shame (My Sister)", which came out later in 1990. She had been all about going to school but this isn't something that can be done forever. Perhaps the first sign that her approach was set to change was the uncharacteristically mature cover art of her debut album Down to Earth, which manages to make her look like an earnest R&B vocalist. Maturity is always difficult for young artists to deal with but luckily we'll be meeting Monie Love again on this blog so we can see how she managed. Stay tuned.

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Also of some cop

The Soup Dragons: "I'm Free"

From the end of June in 1991 until I finished school four years later, "I'm Free" was my start of the summer holidays anthem of choice — but why did it fail to catch on with anyone else? Celebratory and with a chorus that everyone can singalong with instantly, it has both terrace chant and high school graduation theme written all over it. An early Jagger-Richards composition, it was nothing special when The Rolling Stones first recorded it but kudos to The Soup Dragons (or their management, or their record label) for seeing potential in it. Happy Mondays had set the template for the baggy cover version with their still stunning rendition of "Step On" but the choir, the dancefloor beat and the memorable toasting courtesy of Junior Reid ramps it up to another levels of joy (even if I'd still take "Step On" over "I'm Free" in a pinch). You can all have your bittersweet numbers by bloody Green Day or Natalie Merchant as you bid farewell to school or the job you hate or as you move to another country but I'll have this. I might even have it played at my funeral, which would be laugh if only for me.