I was looking through Who Sampled to research my HALCALI samples for my Spotify playlist which should get at least a post or two of its own. I wasn’t sure about LL Cool J’s Boomin’ System. Isn’t the chorus a vocal sample from a previous song? I should include both songs maybe. Couldn’t find that but it turns out that song samples the beat from Hold On…[or both songs sample James Brown’s The Payback…yep.]

Damn, Hold On was a great song. I took my case to twitter, with multiple tweets of praise for the song and group in general. As is usual, The twitterverse stood silent in awe. For a normal person, this would be enough. “Hey, remember this group? They were pretty good.” Fine and dandy. But nope, I can’t just leave it at that. What am I talking about, liking En Vogue so much? I don’t have any En Vogue records. What kind of asshole poseur am I? I needed to buy at least one En Vogue record to back up this outlandishness.

Specifically, I was praising early En Vogue. Because I was there, man. Hold On was the first single. I needed to get the first album. Ahh, but Never Gonna Get It is not on that one? Jeez…how deep am I going into this?

Sidenote: Remember this started with an inquiry on Hip-Hop references in J-pop songs. In addition to praising the group in general, I suggested that J-pop acts should be trying to rip-off En Vogue more. (Early En Vogue.) But Check out the mp3 samples on that first record. Impossibly Corny skits, horrible throw-away ballads, a 40s Jazz tune? J-pop albums are already like this. Or they were until recently. Hold On, with its soulful intro, smooth natural harmonies, modern (non-80s cheese) production, and minor key shift in the pre-chorus (challennnge meee), is the outlier on this album. So why didn’t I just say they should copy that one song? And spare myself agony and embarrassment? Because I was thinking of Namie Amuro’s In the Spotlight (which is not a bad video, I’m a jerk, whatever. I also assume you regularly read and recall my opinions, it’s a total ego trip. Anyway.) It has the same kind of minor key shift in an uplifting song. I like that. Every song should be like that, and I don’t see how I could regret that statement.

So…I just bought the Best Of, of which there are several. This one has the best cover. Why bother with CD? Used, it was cheaper than the files. Plus, full liner notes. Did you know Grover Washington, Jr. is playing sax? Of course not, the people who edit wikipedia do not give a fuck about Grover Washington, Jr. Well, some of them so, but not the same ones that like En Vogue. (I obviously do not give a fuck about him because I just found out he was dead.) Produced and written by Thomas McElroy and Denzil Foster. Most of their good songs were, it turns out.

So I’ve got my hard copy of both Hold On and Never Gonna Get It, twenty-something years after I first heard them. These songs are now as old as the Led Zeppelin I was listening to at the time. So I rip the CD, put it on my iPod, and take the dog for a walk. Even tho these are quality songs and not what you might call a guilty pleasure, I felt a little odd listening to them on purpose without the video. You know, those videos are pretty good. And the girls…I don’t have to tell you Terry is my favorite, but I will. I mean, they are all amazingly hot. But Terry, c’mon. Clearly remember that face in the Whatta Man video, something about her is just cute to me. Wait, she does have a cute face but there’s some other stuff in this video which obviously distracted me from the song because at this point in the record I fully hate myself for listening to this and it’s only 3 songs in. (I think the other best ofs don’t include it because it’s really a Salt-N-Pepa song, but I wanted this one. It’s not the worst song ever, but these raps, they are not so good. They were better in other songs, right? I’m not even checking.)

Then there’s Free Your Mind which begins with an In Living Color reference, wow. It’s one of those kind of message songs you can’t argue with but man there’s some corny lines. It’s overall a good…it’s basically a rock song. Which they never came back to as a style as far as I know, but I’m admitting I don’t have the entire discography. And yeah it’s probably all on Spotify. That’s great. I do have Spotify. Yes, thank you, normal person. That must be great.

Don’t Let Go (Love) is a good song. Forgot about that one. I like the guitar line. It’s played by…Tommy Martin. Or Martin Terry. I guess it doesn’t matter.

Giving Him Something He Can Feel is the only other song I really remember by them. Which is a Curtis Mayfield cover, and it’s well done, because they are good singers. And it’s even further out from something I would normally be listening to in that it’s not either really, really good, or strange in some way. So I get that feeling from it that is not full-on self-hate, but the odd feeling of being in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing. Which is a feeling I used to go for as much as possible, but now that I’ve listened to every type of music, I get it from music I’ve heard before and neither love nor hate. Because there’s not really a reason to listen to it, not because I’m not supposed to be listening to it. It’s not quite the same feeling. I’m not breaking some kind of self-imposed taboo, I’m just wasting time.

This album goes on for over an hour. It almost includes their cover of the Beatles’ Yesterday, but then it doesn’t. It’s just part of Give It Up, Turn It Loose, which is not a James Brown cover. It’s ok. It’s pretty good. I’m starting to like it a lot. It would be a lot better without the Beatles/skit in the beginning.

The whole thing is not at all chronological, so you’ve got an another song from the first album later on (Lies, a decent song with an awful rap in it for no reason) and there’s some other early singles later on that were supposedly hits but I don’t remember them. And Runaway Love which was supposedly their only single to really flop, I’m gonna say deservedly. Let It Flow is an odd later album cut, like that one.

I just noticed my mp3s are mistagged. Don’t know how that happened. Someone entered it into the database wrong. It’s not an important detail for you to know, but it does increase my time spent with this record, cause I’ve gotta fix that shit and I guess I’m taking it out on you. It’s completely uncalled for, sorry.

Whatever was a good later single. With the BUM BUM BUM BUMMMs and some nice production touches…I’m a complete asshole. “Early En Vogue”, jeez. It’s mostly all good. There’s no irony about it. There was no irony. I’m glad I bought it. Would buy again.

Oh man, I forgot about the awful remixes at the end. I actually deleted the mp3s of those. No reason for that. %