Every NYC Pride weekend has a national anthem-it’s a song that you can’t escape whether you’re parade, bar-crawling in Hell’s Kitchen or club-hopping until dawn. And this year’s peach-flag-peach clock that got it all free to shake, of course, Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul”.
The first single that picked up the vibe of Bey’s upcoming seventh studio album, “Renaissance” (out July 29), is a shaking movement that gave house music – the length of the underground sound – earth in the mainstream. And a few days before “Break My Soul” broke the internet, Drake released “Honest, Nevermind,” an album that found superstar “Way 2 Sexy” twirling from hip-hop to earth with a bona fides dance of South African beatmaster. Black Coffee.
In a flash of disco football, two of music’s heaviest hitters double-declared that this is home summer. And as the head of the old earth, I am here for that.
Euphoric energy and cathartic release – both spirit and spiritual – house music is what the broken soul world needs right now. After spending most of the last two years of jams dancing around our own earth – or in NYC, a one -room apartment – it’s time to make Technotronic and pump jams again.
And while some haters have dragged Beyoncé and Drake to show their love to the earth-as if crawling some secret club that even such A-listers can’t get into-it’s the ultimate sign for that genre, a lot. like the disco before it, it has kicked into the basement over the years.
Bey and Drizzy – who you can be sure are music fans and students as much as they are bankable hitmakers – are both tapping into the black roots of the earth. They’re representing a culture that, also because of its history in the gay community, has been largely marginalized.
But as much as Beyoncé and Drake pumped new life into earth music, they weren’t the first to take the genre for a crossover spin. In the early ’90s, CeCe Peniston, Crystal Waters and Robin. S. all scored top 10 singles with “Finally,” “Gypsy Woman” and “Show Me Love,” respectively. In fact, it was the 1993 hit Robin S. that sampled Beyoncé in “Break My Soul.”
If you thought Drake invented all the concepts of rappers to switch to house music, there was a hip -house movement in the early ’90s – made to remember by everyone from C&C Music Factory and“ Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody). Dance Now) ”to Snap! with “Power” and even Queen Latifah with “Come Into My House.”
And let’s not forget Madonna, who struck a home action tide and brought the ballroom scene to the masses with “Vogue,” her 1990 No. 1 smash. Madge and other superstar divas such as Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey rely on home remixes by the likes of Shep Pettibone, Frankie Knuckles and David Morales to connect them to a hipper – and very influential – audience at the club.
Carey is even known to return to the studio to cut back the vocals for his home remix. That’s how much music – and its pulsating power – meant to her.
Hopefully, house-music legends such as Ten City, Inner City and Ultra Naté-who are celebrating the 25th anniversary of their classic “Free” this year-will feel more loved and discovered by some new fans because of Beyoncé and Drake. Now that will warm my soul.
