Monthly Archives: January 2022

Happy 25th Anniversary to Camp Lo’s debut album Uptown Saturday Night, originally released January 28, 1997.

1997 began with hip-hop fans still mourning the loss of Tupac Shakur, and before reaching the halfway mark of the calendar year, we found ourselves once again grieving the loss of another megastar, The Notorious B.I.G. The toll of losing two musical giants, especially within such a short timeframe, amidst the still ongoing East Coast vs. West Coast beef, sucked the oxygen out of the hip-hop world and created a palpable feeling of instability.

In between the deaths of the two legends, hip-hop did seem to catch a second wind and regain her footing as a duo from the cultural birthplace charged in to take us on a trip Uptown and remind us of happier days a few decades earlier.

Arguably the first great album of 1997 and a nod to the 1974 film of the same name that starred Sir Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte and Bill Cosby, Uptown Saturday Night saw Camp Lo come literally out of nowhere with a complete package of style and musical chemistry. At least for a moment, the group’s debut long player made us forget the trivialities of who was dissing who. And when listening to the album in retrospect, one can only assume that Sonny Cheeba and Geechi Suede inspired their contemporaries to step it up a notch or two.

From the first time we heard these cats on their lead single “Coolie High” they reminded us of everything cool we heard (or remembered) about the ‘70s. From the hairstyles and fashion we saw in our own photo albums, to the smooth slang we watched over and over in Blaxploitation films and syndicated rerun television shows. By the time “Luchini AKA This Is It” dropped, Camp Lo had convincingly made a case that they had nearly perfected a sound all their own, a sound that was undeniably soulful and broke from the New York City mold of screwface cynicism enough to be dubbed Northernplayalisticadillacmuzik.

If you were anything like me, you couldn’t get to the nearest record store fast enough. And once you pulled the CD or tape from the shelf, you found a rare album that was impressive, adorned with its dope album cover, which called to mind the beloved TV series Good Times, and payed tribute to the artist Ernie Barnes who created the immortal “Sugar Shack” piece that also graced the album cover of the king of cool Marvin Gaye’s 1976 album I Want You.

As if the music doesn’t speak well enough for itself, the group’s conceptual chemistry furthers Uptown’s distinctiveness with the appropriate song titles along the track listing, with joints named “Krystal Karrington,” “Sparkle,” and the ode to New York City’s first celebrity crime lord, “Nicky Barnes AKA It’s Alright.” Indeed, the album fulfilled the promise of being a full blown masterpiece crafted by two swag gods.

The back-and-forth exchange between Sonny Cheeba and Geechi Suede’s rapid-fire but smooth delivery is perfectly complimented by Ski’s stellar production, which should make you smile, when you consider that he may have held back his best work from Jay Z, while he was helping construct his debut LP Reasonable Doubt (1996) which was released only months earlier.

The album’s fluidity almost makes it impossible to point out highs and lows, but the excitement of Digable Planets’ Butterfly on “Swing,” particularly with the dramatic video entrance, definitely helped solidify the album, along with the other veteran appearance of Trugoy the Dove (a.k.a. Dave) from De La Soul on “B-Side to Hollywood.”

All in all, Uptown Saturday Night was exactly that: the good stiff drink we needed during a stress-filled year of grief and drama across the hip-hop landscape. Luckily for us, the content of the drink has aged like vintage whiskey for the distinguished ear ready to have a listen once again, 25 years later.

By Thoomas Hobbs
Okayplayer

Behind The Beat is a new series where journalist Thomas Hobbs talks to rap producers about the making of their most iconic beat. For our second edition, Hobbs spoke with Ski Beatz, who crafted Camp Lo’s iconic single “Luchini AKA This Is It.”

Hip-hop had never seen anything quite like Camp Lo before. The Bronx rap duo, which consisted of slick-talking MCs Sonny Cheeba and Geechi Suede, looked like they had caught a yellow cab straight from a Blaxploitation movie set, with their coded slang and eccentric personalities instantly distinctive.

Although it wasn’t a huge chart success, peaking at no. 27 on the Billboard 200, their 1997 studio debut Uptown Saturday Night quickly developed a cult following, with its fusion of jazz, funk, soul, and luxurious hood rap feeling like a breath of fresh air compared to the anarchic gangster rap that ruled the airwaves. While rap in the mid-90s had arguably become too fatalistic and obsessed with the idea of MCs having brushes with death, Camp Lo pushed the culture into a much more colorful direction.

“Coolie High” is so laid back you can envision Sonny and Geechi recording their verses in hammocks, while “Rockin It AKA Spanish Harlem” is capable of making the most hard-nosed street guy get up and do the “cha-cha-cha.” These vibrant songs captured the feel-good glamour of a Saturday Night in the Boogie Down in the 1970s, creating an escapist playground where finding a date, a bottle of Amaretto, and a place to go dance with a hottie were among life’s most pressing concerns.

“It was like they had stepped out of another era completely,” agrees legendary rap producer Ski Beatz, who considers himself the third “unofficial” member of Camp Lo, having produced the majority of Uptown Saturday Night. Even now, he continues to work prominently with the duo. “They had those crazy Donny Hathaway hats, Opal sunglasses, trench coats dragging along the ground when they walked, toothpicks hanging out their mouths… it was crazy. They really had those Partridge Family colors. It was like watching Coolie High in real-time.”

But that’s not to say that Camp Lo’s recording persona was an act. Ski is keen to stress that these guys really are wired in this way. “These dudes really are those people. They naturally had the same kind of flyness of 1970s Marvin Gaye [The Uptown Saturday Night artwork is a tribute to Marvin’s I Want You album cover], but with this raw ‘90s spin on it. I used to listen to them talk to one another and understand about 20% of it.”

The song arguably most synonymous with the group’s unique style remains “Luchini AKA This Is It,” an ebullient New York City rap anthem that sounds ripe for a spin in a disco hall. Rather than describe themselves as being “faded” the group uses “Luchini” to refer to their euphoric state of being as “Harlem River Quiver,” a reference to the dizzying 1928 Duke Ellington song of the same name. The idea of possessing “Belafonte Vigga” levels of swag, meanwhile, is a loving reference to the fabled strength of legendary actor and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte.

Across the song’s breezy four minutes, Sonny and Geechi rap about being fly in a way that’s never anything less than innovative. However, it’s Ski’s perfect beat that inspires such brilliant rapping. “We had basically finished [Uptown Saturday Night] and Profile Records felt we were missing a single and needed something for the radio so I went into the lab for a week and just started digging through the crates,” Ski said.

“Soon as I dropped the needle on that Dynasty song (‘Adventures in the Land of Music’) and heard those horns, I knew I had found something special. Luchini was slang for money and having wealth, and something that the guys said a lot, so I built it into the hook. Soon as the guys heard my hook, we knew this was unique. The reason I say ‘This is It’ like I did was because I just knew we had found Gold.”

With studio time “costing like 5k a second” back in the ’90s, Ski says the duo crafted their verses at his crib on 110th Street in Harlem so that by the time they went to the studio the pair could lay their vocals as quickly as possible. Of the beat itself, Ski, rather modestly, said it was “easy” to create.

Ski Beatz said Camp Lo crafted “Luchini” at his house on 110th Street in Harlem. Photo Credit: Profile Records

“Once you find that magic sample, the rest is easy,” Ski said. “I added the drums from ‘All Night Long‘ (by The Mary Jane Girls) to make it sound more disco, a little bit of piano, and then I made the sample sound more bling. I’m not a looper kind of person, but that loop was just so perfect. The way the sample comes in, well, it didn’t have a down beat, so I had to bring it in on the snare. It just made it all sound extra cool.”

Around the time Ski Beatz was recording with Camp Lo, he was also working with Roc-A-Fella records on Reasonable Doubt, the debut album from an aspiring rapper who went by the name JAY-Z. Ski, who produced Reasonable Doubt highlights such as “Feelin’ It” and “Dead Presidents II” already had strong ties with Roc-A-Fella, with his rap group Original Flavor being managed by the label’s co-founder Dame Dash. Yet he admits that splitting his time between Camp Lo and the more twisted mafioso fables of JAY-Z was challenging, with Hov sometimes taking beats he had originally intended for the duo.