Today's
Underground Obsidian group, is really a solo artist - singer Dionne Farris - whose career
tribulations show almost exactly how FRACKED UP the music industry is.
In the early 90's she was a vocalist with the group Arrested Development
who scored a pair of hits including "Tennessee" (where you can hear
Dionne singing "Can you Help Me - Can you Help me Understand Your
Plan?")
After a coupe. tours and an MTV Unplugged performance and album, Dionne went solo
and released the album "Wild Seed, Wild Flower" in 1995. Most of it,
like Lauren Hill who followed Dionne out of her own Hip-Hop group the Fuguees is R&B laced with 90's Neo-Soul.
But not all of it, there are also songs like this one - Passion.
Funny thing about the Guitar Work on this song, I actually happen to
know thie Left-Handed Guitarist. He's L.A. Black Rock Coalition member Tory Ruffin,
who actually had his own Jazz/Metal/Hip-Hop group at the time called Civil Rite
who were nearly signed to Death Row Records by Dr. Dre. I didn't even
know Tory was on this song, or in this video until I heard it and
recognized his playing. (His Pick Squeals are Distinctive) You've all probably seen Tory but didn't
realize it - he was the Guitarists of "Sexual Chocolate" in Eddie
Murphy's "Coming to America" and his Day Job has been as the touring
guitar player with Morris Day and The Time so if you saw the end of "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" - you saw Tory. Tory was also a member of the group Subject to Change with Cree Summer on vocals. These days he can be found fronting his own band FreakJuice.
The Bassist looks to me like Lonnie Marshall from Weapon of Choice.
Anyway, beside this song "Wild Seed" had another rock song - "I Know", which actually became a Number #1 Hit!
If you watch the Official Video for this song (which doesn't allow embedding) you'll notice someone else familiar - the guitarist shown here is David Ryan Harris of Atlanta's Follow For Now who I profiled previously. After Follow For Now, David founded the groups Brand New Immortals and can sometimes be seen backing up John Mayer.
Ok,
so now we've got a Number #1 Hit, a track on a popular Soundtrack
"Breathless" and naturally the Record Label has to start some Beef. Columbia refused to allow Dionne to release and record ANY MORE ROCK SONGS
- they just wanted her to stick to Soul and R&B, period. Just like
Tory and David had gone from fronting some fairly hard rocking bands
(Civil Rite, Follow For Now) to being backup sidemen in pretty much
straight R&B and Pop (With The Time and with John Mayer
respectively) the Stepin Fetchit-izing of black musicians goes on and on. Dionne's label insisted
she stay within the "Black Music Box" that made it easy and comfortable
for them to market her (although she'd already hit #1 by LEAVING that
box?)
Even for those people who think the only color that matters in music is "Green' - Does that make ANY Damn sense?
The dispute caused her to leave the label - and Music - for the next ten years.
She
has just now resurfaced with her own label and music released as part
of a series of short films in a project called "Remember My Name. Vol 1"
- the Latest Release of which on her Youtube Channel is titled "Baggage". She's also funded a brand new live solo album "Dionne Get Your Gunn" via Pledgemusic.
