1980 to 1988: A MUSICAL CULTURE IN TRANSITION
Looking at gold and platinum sales tells a very simple tale
I’ve been fascinated with how cultural’ movements rise and fall in popular culture. Most movements don’t disappear completely, though the scenes that give them rise (situated around night clubs, bars, coffee shops, galleries, recordings and dance studios, museums) are often victims of time. As long as the memory of a cultural movement resides in the souls of the people who loved it, I believe it still lives.
That said, the transition from an R&B centered black music to one where hip hop holds sway, will always have a hold on my imagination. I lived through it. Reported about the change as it happened. Wrote books that captured both sides of the equation (The Death of Rhythm & Blues, Hip Hop America). Recently I decided to do a small experiment to see what insight it would yield.
I got a list of the gold and platinum albums and singles certified by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1980 and 1988, back when it was all about physical media, be it vinyl, cassettes or CDs. I chose 1980 because rap records were a tiny parts of the market, because I wanted an empirical marker of the pre-hip hop black music market. I chose ‘88 because it was “the golden age” of hip hop. But it wasn’t simply to see what rap records were selling, but WHAT IT HAD REPLACED in the marketplace. The full hip hop takeover wouldn’t happen until the mid-90s. So what I was hoping to observe in ‘88 was a marketplace in the process of transformation.
In 1980 thirty-five black music artists were awarded either gold and platinum records. Only one was a rapper. Kurtis Blow’ “The Breaks” on Mercury Records was a gold single, selling over 500,000 copies. Because Sugar Hill Records wouldn’t report its sales to the RIAA, it was “The Breaks,” not “Rapper’s Delight” that goes down in history to be the first MC led record to officially go gold. If I hold it to just musical artists, that eliminates Richard Pryor’s ‘Greatest Hits,’ which went gold and was originally released in 1977. Of the remaining gold and platinum certified records seven were by vocal groups, such as the Jackson’s ‘Triumph’ was platinum, Ray, Goodman & Brown had a gold self-titled album and gold single, “Special Lady,” Shalamar enjoyed an gold album, ‘Big Fun’ and single “Second Time Around.” Of course solo singers were represented with a wide range of music, from Prince’s gold single, “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and platinum album ‘Prince,’ to Larry Graham’s “One In A Million” platinum single and album, to Dione Warwick’s platinum ‘Dione.’
But the biggest category of sales success were bands. The Brothers Johnson’s ‘Light Up the Night’ and the Isley Brothers’s ‘Go All the Way’ were the only ones to top the 1,000,000 copies necessary to be labeled platinum, but Cameo, Con Funk Shun, the Gap Band, the Bar-Kays, the Fatback Band, Funkadelic, Kool & the Gang, Ray Parker & Raydio, Parliament, Rufus, the S.O.S. Band, Zapp all sold over 500,000 copies. George Clinton’s P-Funk empire was falling apart. The super groups, Earth, Wind & Fire and the Commodores, didn’t have new albums out during the reporting period.
But overall these numbers speak to the variety within the world of self-contained bands and the fact that many were regional acts (the Bar-Kays were big down South, while the Fatback Band was a New York/New Jersey act), who didn’t need big crossover hits or even hits in the African-American community to big viable attractions. However technology was about to profoundly change their line ups and sound. Synthesizers and drum machines were about to change music making from an ensemble process to one that one or two players could create. Stevie Wonder was the poster boy for this and Prince his inheritor, but soon everyone was replacing horns with keyboard patches, eliminating Latin percussion, and cutting payroll. Even before the hip hop takeover these big bands were already heading for obsolescence.
Looking over the 1988 list of gold and platinum is to enter a new landscape. Bands are still around, but only six of them made the list, including Ziggy Marley & the Melody Makers’s gold ‘Conscious Party.’ Though the Deele and GUY are technically bands, they are basically vehicles for producer/writers in the ensemble, like Babyface & LA in the Deele and Teddy Riley in GUY. Earth, Wind & Fire, over fourteen albums the epitome of musicianship and platinum sales, barely reached gold with ‘Touch the World.’ Vocal giants, Luther Vandross (‘Any Love’) and Anita Baker (‘Rapture’ and ‘Giving You the Best That I Got’), were still selling well over 1,000,000 copies of their recent albums. Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson both had multiple albums still selling in huge numbers.
But the rise of hip hop is undeniable with fourteen rap releases, including ‘The Colors’ soundtrack, either platinum (LL Cool J’s ‘Radio,’ Kool Moe Dee’s ‘How Ya Like Me Now,’ Run-DMC’s ‘Tougher Than Leather,’ 'DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince’s ‘He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper,’ Salt N Pepa’s ‘Hot, Cool & Vicious’) or gold (Dana Dane’s ‘Dana Dane with Fame,’ EPMD’s ‘Strictly Business,’ Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock’s “It Takes Two,” Eric B & Rakim’s ‘Follow the Leader,’ J.J. Fad’s ‘Supersonic,’ Public Enemy’s ‘It Takes A Nation of Millions,’ the 2 Live Crew’s ‘Move Somethin’, ‘2 Live Is What We Are,’ Whodini’s ‘Open Sesame’). Toss in platinum albums by new jack swing stars, Al B. Sure!, Keith Sweat, New Edition, and Bobby Brown, and a sonic revolution is well underway.
While bands were already disappearing from the charts, so were vocal groups - the Whispers were only old school stand up group on the chart - and more traditional soul singers like Freddie Jackson, Gladys Knight, and Billy Ocean were about to see their sales drop significantly in the coming years. Terence Trent D’Arby, who many touted as the next great soul singer, had a double platinum debut album, ‘Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’Arby.' Unfortunately his soul and rock flavored follow up albums would arrive as a very different aesthetic was taking hold.
Today we have very few black bands of any stature (the Roots and who else?). We have no young vocal groups, the closest being New Edition, who debuted in the ‘80s and Boyz II Men, who debuted in the ‘90s. We don’t even have rap groups like Run-DMC or EPMD or collectives like the Terror Squad or Native Tongues. From very expansive large ensembles in the ‘80s, black musical culture has been become about singular stars who don’t share the stage and certainly not the spotlight. Why? Well, that’s the subject for another day.
Happy Labor Day Weekend.