Why is Egyptian Lover’s ”Egypt, Egypt” this week’s selection for Jheri Curl Fridays?
-Because this is what passed for ”West Coast hip-hop” before Ice-T and N.W.A. brought gangsta rap to the forefront.
-Because upon my move to Southfield, MI (a suburb of Detroit) in 1984, this was one of the first songs I remember hearing and being completely blown away by-it sounded like nothing I’d heard before, except maybe “Planet Rock.” Granted, I had no idea who Kraftwerk was back then. If I had, I might not have been as surprised.
-Because it reminds me of a local ”Soul Train”-esque show called ”The Scene,” which aired after school in the Detroit area. The dancers on that show would pop, lock and robot their asses off to this song.
-Because it makes me want to pop and lock and robot *my* ass off.
-Have I mentioned popping and locking yet? You should be doing this.
At any rate, ”Egyptian Lover” was only a moderate hit nationally, but was huge in certain pockets of the country. Off the back of that hit, Egyptian Lover (AKA Greg Broussard) has built up a decent career for himself. He released a few albums in the Eighties (although none were super successful) and continues to perform and DJ today (at least, according to his Wikipedia page.)
Not bad for a synthesizer, a vocoder and some monotone rapping. Oh, and a wee bit of moanin’ and groanin’.
There was never a video for the song (that I know of, anyway) but after the fan made clip for “Egypt, Egypt,” check out the Lover himself hosting an instructional beat-making video from his hotel room in London.
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