It’s difficult to quantify the expansive influence of Greg Broussard, the producer known to the world as Egyptian Lover. As a kid he grew up listening to acts like Kraftwerk, Prince, Rick James and Zapp, and those acts taught Egypt that it was all about the groove and keeping the party going on the dance floor. The funkiness and electronic aesthetic of those acts and his love for the rap music coming from the East Coast from groups like The Sugar Hill Gang was inspiring to this impressionable kid from South Central LA looking to make his own musical statement. Starting in the early 80’s, the MC, DJ, and multi-instrumentalist was a transformative force in Los Angeles dance music. Egyptian Lover’s inventive skills using synthesizers, 808 drum machines, and Vocoders among other tools was massively influential on hip-hop and dance music as he pioneered what we now might call electro funk. On top of his musical talent, Egypt (as he likes to be called), had a sly sense of humor with songs like “Dial-A-Freak”, “My House (On the Nile)”, “Computer Love”, and “What Is A DJ Who Can’t Scratch”. These songs all fit right in with the exotic, worldly character that was Egyptian Lover.
There are loads of artists both in the realm of hip-hop and dance music who have cited the influence of Egypt’s music in their own work, or have simply acknowledged him as a pioneer. One of his biggest fans is Chris Manak, better known as Peanut Butter Wolf, the producer and DJ behind venerable hip-hop label Stones Throw Records. It was Wolf who worked with Egyptian Lover to compile the recently released anthology Egyptian Lover 1983 to 1988, which celebrates the West Coast electro hip-hop pioneer’s early catalog. The anthology features 22 classic and unreleased recordings that were all taken from the original master tapes, and it captures a period that was especially fruitful for Egypt. While all of these songs have what we would now probably see as an “old school sound”, even all these years later they still make a perfect party soundtrack. Egypt can still be found traveling the world and playing shows, often using the same analog equipment he has always used, and recently he took some time to chat about his history as well as the new anthology.
You worked with Peanut Butter Wolf to put out this new compilation. Had you been looking to put out an anthology from that period of your career for a while?
It came about because me and Peanut Butter Wolf are friends. I’ve been trying to do something like this for a while but just didn’t have time to do it. I was working on my album Platinum Pyramids and that took more time than I thought. He wanted to do it and I was like nah, I’ll do it on my own. Then like 3 years later I hadn’t done it yet so I was like, let’s do it.
How did you go about picking out the tracks? I know artists like Peanut Butter Wolf and Dam Funk came in and touched some things up. What was the process of revisiting all your material like?
We went and picked out some songs and we wanted to hear the whole thing of how it [grew] in LA. So we picked songs from Breaking and Entering, I Need a Freak from Sexual Harassment, and everybody thought I made the song but I actually remade the song. I made some synths on top of that. And then all the early stuff that I found on the master tapes that I never released; there’s a song called “Electric Encounter” that I never released and I didn’t even want to release it [back then]. We went in the studio and redid the 808 and it came out how I wanted it to come out originally. So it’s really cool to have this new beat and piece that will go down in history. All the instruments that I played and the beats that I programed for those songs, it’s like wow, what was I thinking making these beats? I can’t do that today, I was just so into it back then, and it was like wow, I wish I had that mind again [laughs].
[youtube id=”9zrH1QnqU_k” width=”630″ height=”350″]
Do you think you feel like that because of technology or just because you were young and trying out everything back then?
I was trying out all kinds of crazy stuff, didn’t have no idea how to arrange a song, so each beat is not arranged properly. It’s just arranged like when a DJ would just mix a record and then mix another record and just keep going on and on. One guy asked me, ‘who arranged your songs for you?’ I said, I did. But I had no idea what arrangement was. A funky way with things is all we need. If there was something wrong with it I would just mix it up again and again. I was a kid just in the studio with no idea producing arrangements and all of that, and I was just like, that song came out great.
When you go back and listen to this stuff, the sounds you were making are wild and out there, but they’re also ahead of their time. When you were a kid growing up in California, how did you discover the range of sounds that you eventually used to create your own music?
I just had certain sounds in my head that I wanted to put on there. I wanted all the keyboards and that was close enough, and then we tweaked it a little bit. I didn’t know what I was doing – turn knob left, turn knob right – that kind of style. Everything was like that until I found out exactly what it meant and I could say this is the beginning of a style. I bought a keyboard and just started figuring it out on my own, and I started making new sounds and saving them and using them in the studio. It was all a learning process. Every instrument I had, I had a little knowledge of how to make things sound a certain way, and I would ask the engineers, how can I make this sound like a robot? They’d be like, you mean like a telephone voice? Yeah that but metal, like a bot. Studio lingo I learned from them, and they were like, this is your college, so ask any questions you want. I’m still learning today with different engineers and keyboard players.
[vimeo id=”158579016″ width=”630″ height=”350″]
Given how much you did manually in the studio, what are your thoughts on the popularity of EDM today and how much of it just revolves around button pushing?
It’s a lot easier to make a song today. You don’t have to go into a professional studio and record like I did. On my new album 1984 I went back into the studio and recorded with analog gear like the old days and it cost a lot of money, and I see guys at home just making songs with their laptops. They can download sounds and programs for free and make songs. It’s like wow, in the studio you have to take it more serious than just playing around at home with a song. In the studio it’s like, this has to be right, I’m spending money and this has to sound right. So me personally, I look at it like it’s my professional career in the studio and at home it’s like just making demos and ideas before I take it to that next level.
Do you see technology today as a blessing or a curse when it comes to making music and performing live?
I think it’s a blessing for me personally. I was a kid and where I grew up in the inner city of South Central LA, I think to have an iPad or a laptop, it’s easier than going to the studio. I don’t need thousands of dollars to make a song. Today you can get music out quicker, you can do a video in your hood, people dancing and rapping, you can use your own beats, and you can become popular that way. When I was making mixtapes my friends would bring the tapes to their friends and word of mouth spread around like that. Today with the internet you have not just your friends, but you have people all over the world who can listen to you. So I think all of the technology today can help you start faster than when I first started. Everything that must be used today to make a record, go ahead and use it, get it out there, do what you gotta do. And if by chance you have a hit record and you made it at home, take that money and go into the real studio to make your next album and really get out there and get a professional sound out of it. NWA’s first thing came out and some of it sounded like crap because they made it on a four-track cassette, but when they started making money they went to the real studio and it sounded professional.
[youtube id=”_Pr5ekIG-4s” width=”630″ height=”350″]
That being said, has your approach to playing live sets changed from what it was in the 80’s?
Oh yeah. I used to bring keyboards and drum machines, emulators and all that shit for my live sets. Traveling with all that equipment was a hassle. Today the keyboards are worth more money and you can’t find some of the equipment I have, so I only bring some small ones. People that do stuff on their laptops, I’m all for it. When you have to bring all that vinyl to the club, I can understand why we’re using laptops because it’s convenient. Whenever you can do to rock the party, go ahead and rock the party.
You’ve said that you always wanted to be Dean Martin. What about him attracted you as a kid?
To me Dean Martin was cool. I saw The Wrecking Crew and he played a character called Matt Helm and he had this bar that came off the wall with champagne, pools, he had a circle bed that spins around. I ain’t ever seen nothing like that before, that’s what I wanted. I wanted to be that guy, that lover, whatever you need right there, that’s what I wanted to be. Then I started listening to his music, my father had a bunch of his albums, and I bought like 12 different Dean Martin albums. I didn’t care what one was the first album, second, third. I was like, he has his own style and if I was a singer I would do that. So I knew that if I ever did stuff I would have to have a style, so I have to create my own style. When I created my style I liked funk bands and Kraftwerk, Planet Rock. So I created this style that everybody called the West Coast Style and everybody started copying it. Other people in LA started doing stuff I was doing and it became a West Coast sound. So if you hear my first album, my new album that just came out is the same style. It’s not the West Coast sound, it’s just another sound.
Egyptian Lover: 1983-1988 is out now on Stones Throw Records
