When Information Society appeared there with their three-piece
suits and spiked hair, the place was packed. "It
was so MTV to the kids there," Gardner recalls.
"It was the first time that they ever came that
close to something that was MTV, something that was
so pop and seemed so worldly to them that they just
exploded. They wound up coming back to that club every
few weeks."
Tommy Boy signed the record and with Louis Vega, then
the Devil's Nest DJ, Gardner remixed the wannabe-British
sound of "Running" into something that was
quintessential Latin freestyle. "They were sore
at me a little bit at first when I did this thing,"
Gardner admits. "They were like, 'Uhhh, now we're
reduced to this cheesy freestyle group'. But then when
they saw the impact it had on the people when they came
to perform in the club they just couldn't believe it."
Produced by Fred Maher, Information Society's 1988 album
continued in a Human League/Depeche Mode/"Planet
Rock" vein with added touches of freestyle. The
group went on to be huge in Brazil, but their biggest
American hit was "What's On Your Mind (Pure Energy)",
another significant landmark in Tommy Boy's sampling
sagas. "That was where we got to clear a Star Trek
sample by hiring Leonard Nimoy's son as our attorney,"
says Tom Silverman. "It's very hard because Paramount
doesn't clear stuff that they own very easily. So we
had Mr. Spock saying 'Pure energy'."
With the rise of Def Jam, Run-D.M.C. and N.W.A., rap
in the second half of the Eighties had become tougher,
outspoken, yet more commercial than ever. The underground
was overground. At Tommy Boy, Sweet Trio and Apache
showed the two sides of the smooth 'n' nasty approach:
Sweet Trio's "Non-Stop", a girl power rap
with crashing beatbox and scratches, and "Gangsta
Bitch", a Q-Tip production rapped by Flavour Unit
alumnus Apache. Monica Lynch remembers this track with
mixed feelings. One of her all-time favourites, it caused
controversy for the label. "We came under attack
from a lot of black womens' groups," she says,
"because it was a shocking image, portraying female
gangsters. We couldn't get a lot of radio play on it
but it did really well."
After some years of patchy success, Tommy Boy's real
renaissance came in 1988 with "Plug Tunin'",
the stunning debut 12" by De La Soul. Stetsasonic's
Daddy-O had taken a tape of Prince Paul's production
work with De La Soul, a Long Island trio of two rappers
and a DJ who called themselves Trugoy the Dove, Posdnous
and Mase.
"It was one of those magic moments where you put
the tape on and you say, wow," explains Monica.
"It hit me and it hit me hard. For me, De La Soul
were revolutionaries in a sense. Especially the video
for 'Me Myself and I'. At that time, rap was starting
to fall into cliches or creating styles that were not
inclusive of the whole rap audience. They were the antidote
to the prevailing macho, leather and chains aesthetic."
De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising was released in
1989, a time when Tom Silverman was wondering if the
label would ever have a gold record. "Everybody
else had a gold record," he says. "Only Fred
Mineo at Select and I were the only ones who never had
a gold record. I said, 'Fred, even Sleeping Bag has
a gold record'. It was really irking until De La Soul
broke the barrier that year."
Witty and experimental, structured as a series of game
show skits, the album introduced a totally new sound
to hip-hop. "Our music turns out that way,"
said Trugoy, "because of our backgrounds. Pos,
his father would listen to old jazz and stuff like that.
My mother and father would listen to a lot of reggae
and calypso and Mase's mother listenend to a lot of
R&B." The appeal of tracks like "Potholes
In My Lawn", with its bizarre subject and easy-going
conversational flavour, was quirky enough to introduce
Tommy Boy to a college radio audience. "College
kids really got into that record in a huge way,"
says Monica. "A lot of white kids, it appealed
to what they perceived as a hippie, bohemian vibe that
was a little bit more playful and creative than other
things out there. 'Me Myself and I' was a huge, huge
hit and that drove the sales of the album."
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