Juicy Death - RIP Mtume

[Petey Pate]

James Mtume has died.

Both a jazz musician and an R&B songwriter/producer, he's probably best known for the R&B hit Juicy Fruit, which was later sampled by Biggie Smalls and many others. He was Miles Davis' percussionist in the mid-70s for the 'Agharta-era' band and also played with McCoy Tyner.

Here's a fairly extensive interview with him which covers most of his career.

https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2014/05/mtume-interview

R.I.P.

[chutnut]

Shit that's a bummer, that interview sounds interesting I'll have a watch

[Fonz]

Nice interview

[Petey Pate]

Shit that's a bummer, that interview sounds interesting I'll have a watch

Thanks! Never heard this before.

This part from that interview is pretty funny.

What was the lyrical inspiration [for Juicy]? It's a pretty risqué song.

Compared to what? Certainly not compared to now. At that time, yeah risqué. It's funny how words can change. The chorus is "you can lick me everywhere," but that's the part that everybody liked.

I give you a little sidebar on that. I got a call from Wrigley's gum. "Mr. Mtume, we want to take a deposition." I didn't even take a lawyer with me, because I knew where it was going. They go in. It was the biggest fucking room I'd ever been in in my life, man. 60, 70 lawyers, so I sit down and they've got the album blown up all over the place and they were trying to find a way to connect that with the gum.

Here's one of the highlights of my life. They go through all of this and they say, "Does 'Juicy Fruit' have anything have to do..." I said, "No." Finally one of the guys says, "Would you mind telling us what the phrase is? What do you mean by the phrase 'you can lick me everywhere'?" I said, "Very simply, it's about oral sex." You want to see a bunch guys turn red? I don't have a favorite song – they're all your children – but I'm always surprised at how "Juicy" has spanned generations.

[chutnut]

I saw the link was Red Bull Music Academy and just assumed it was one of their video interviews! Interesting though, I'm sure I remember a similar anecdote from Patrick Adams about the lyrics of In the Bush by Musique.

I used to play this track a lot as well