"Lady I don't question love. As long as you answer, I'm begging you please, hear my plead"
Camp Lo feat. Tyler Woods - Gotcha (Nick James "Their Eyes Were Watching God" Remix)
First, the reason the post image features singer and my good friend, Siaira Shawn, is because she was going to record to this song but passed on it. I made this remix a few months ago but offered Siaira the beat because I knew she was recording her new album, The Outsider Inside. She was going to use it for an EP she is dropping soon but took a different beat I had instead. Thus, this remix can now see the light of day. I was going to use this image weeks ago to discuss the process of making music, Siaira's song and the album cover I almost made for nothing, but now this image represents the complexity of organizing a music project.
Now, I do not feel that this remix is the best remix I've ever done or that I did anything spectacular with it but I love what the music evokes; quintessential courtship or relationship drama. I called this remix, "Their Eyes Were Watching God" for two reasons: 1. The music is romantic and melancholy and 2. the lyrics have reciprocal and patriarchal moments much like Janie's relationships. Zora Neale Hurston's classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was ahead of it's time (1937) in terms of subject matter and idiomatic discourse. The main character Janie, experiences three different relationships with men in the book. Hurston has no problem dealing with the reality of relationships, whether the interpersonal aspects of relationships or even how social dynamics (community, class, race, culture, religion, and patriarchy) influence and/or determine our experiences in those relationships. The language is unique in that it encapsulates Southern African American linguistics. She utilized southern idioms and dictation in her writing to authenticate the experience while still exhibiting a high literary canon. Like Hurston, Camp Lo cherishes cultural milieu's whether they know it or not. Their propensity to stick to the blaxploitation motif and never stray from it is remarkable given the ever changing identities exhibited in Hip-Hop. Furthermore, their ability to describe a relationship full of ups and downs, tongue and cheek moments, disdain for those prying into their business, and pleas of love and trust remind me of Hurston's realness.
If Camp Lo represents one of Janie's relationships, I would say they represent Joe Starks. Joe Starks bought her gifts and she had fun with Joe and that's all Camp Lo really talk about in the song. Tyler Woods (sings the chorus) would be Tea Cake though because he ain't to proud to beg. Camp Lo is definitely not Tea Cake because they are kind of on some "Ah girl why don't you just trust me though, you know I'll take care of you" old school man type of hype. Hence, blaxploitation male tropes.
In addition, when I make music, I envision a time, place, landscape, aesthetic, type of motion, attitude, behavior, etc. This song sonically reminds me of something vintage, southern, romantic, endearing, honest, and vulnerable. The chorus is beautifully desperate like a Temptation or Barbara Mason song. When I envision a setting or counterpart to music like this, I think of the video the history pictured below.
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