ABSTRACT
On a Sunday morning in 1988 I was a guest, along with producer-songwriter Mtume and a couple of other music industry types, on Bob Slade’s Week in Review, a radio show on New York’s KISS-FM. We were kicking it about African-American culture and Mtume was wailing hip hop upside its head. The man who wrote ’80s standards like Roberta Flack’s “The Closer I Get to You” and Stephanie Mills’s “I Never Knew Love Like This Before,” Mtume is one of the most articulate, thoughtful musicians I’ve ever encountered. He was a political activist with Ron Karenga’s nationalist U.S. organization in the ’60s (with whom he survived a shootout with the Panthers). He played with Miles Davis during his controversial funk period and went on to write and produce for Flack, Mills, Levert, and Phyllis Hyman as well as with his own band. Mtume’s wide musical experience, balanced by his grounding in street politics, has given him a provocative perspective on the evolution of black culture and music.
