Ghetto Gothic - Background

Background

Following the release of Melvin Van Peebles' film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, he premiered two musicals on Broadway, Don't Play Us Cheap and Ain't Supposed To Die A Natural Death, deriving from earlier plays he had written in French. To express the ghetto's turmoil and pathos, Van Peebles used sprechgesang as a form he could tell stories in; he recorded three albums using this style, Brer Soul, Ain't Supposed To Die a Natural Death and As Serious as a Heart-Attack. The albums were categorized as spoken word at the time, but was later called a precursor to rapping and hip hop music.

After recording an album which utilized more traditional songwriting, What the....You Mean I Can't Sing?! (1974), Van Peebles did not record another album for 20 years. In 1993, Van Peebles recorded a new song, "Cruel Jim Crow", for his son Mario's film Posse. Melvin stated that he would not record a new album "until I could do it correctly."

Van Peebles turned down a large money offer from a record label that wanted him to perform his lyrics over samples of older recordings. Van Peebles said, "That's not what I do! The structures of my songs are more complicated and subtle than jingles or nursery rhymes, with music which helps carry the story along. The words aren't just shouted over some loop which repeats itself." Van Peebles later received an offer from Capitol Records and told the label "Here's the deal: Send money, and leave me alone. I'll send the tape. That's it. Just go away, and let the doorknob hit you where the good Lord split you." Capitol gave Van Peebles complete artistic control over the recording as a result, and he was satisfied with the business deal, as well as the finished album.