Chin Chin
Chin Chin
Definitive Jux
By Jose Fritz
Oh, where for art thou Barry White? No white man in a suit jacket should usurp you so. Morrie Turner wrote that “All God’s chillun got soul.” But should any gringo have so much soul? Is that really fair? I think we need to discuss reparations if this is going to continue.
Soft keys underscore falsetto crooning. Songs of love and resentment intermingle just as in life. The absence is that voice, that deep-throated smooth rumble of the sultan of smooth. In their persistent attempts to forge their own blackness in music they forgot Barry. Each song leaves me waiting for Barry to stumble into the studio buzzed on Crown Royal mumbling about his sexual prowess.
The glory of the soft funk of the ‘70s was not in beats and breaks and cheap party drugs. No, it was in the democratization of ethnic music. The success of the ‘60s was that no race or creed was bound to any genre. Charlie Pride sang country tunes. Black Merda explored hard funk and flirted with metal. Sly and the Family Stone merged pop and soul while Smokey Robinson edged slowly out of soul and into mainstream pop. Race was dead. Long live Chin Chin.
Emboldened, Chin Chin rocks the fuzzed out jams. Synthesizers dance the Watusi subdued only by full-on brass sections. They merge elements of r&b with disco, the result being sweeter than Splenda. It tastes like sugar because it’s made of sugar; of course Splenda is raw Trichlorogalactosucrose and is actually made by chlorinating sugar. In contrast, white soul is totally natural, unadulterated and has zero calories.
In some ways their resemblance to Wild Cherry is almost painful. I really want them to break out with “Play that Funky Music” or “Love Rollercoaster.” The Ohio Players would be proud. Jamiroquai had a good hand-hold on the limitations of white R&B but they didn’t have soul. Sure Jason Kay could dance on a conveyor belt in a file room while wearing a silly hat, but he was still white. He made no effort to emulate that which is most soulful about the music he was drawing from. There was a void and it left their music hollow and disposable.
Chin Chin really plays upon that Heteroglossia. At each turn they try to break out of the ‘70s disco mold and into funk and modern electro, but it’s a form of self-denial, and denial is a powerful force. One day they will awaken and understand that they were born to be Barry White’s backing band and that is all they shall be.
It’s such a shame that Barry is dead. Eventually, Jeremy Wilms will have to accept his destiny and do the spoken part at the beginning of “I'm Gonna Love You Just A Little More”
I just wanna hold you / Run my fingers through your hair
Ooh / Outta sight / Uh-huh, right there, you like it like that
Closer / Come here, closer, close / Oh, baby / Oh, baby
It’s not going to be the same in tenor.
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