Ghetto Gothic - Music and Lyrics

Music and Lyrics

Ghetto Gothic contains some rerecordings of songs Van Peebles previously recorded for those projects. "My Love Belongs To You" and "There" first appeared on Van Peebles' What the....You Mean I Can't Sing?! The Ghetto Gothic version of "My Love Belongs To You" is modernized with a hip hop beat, and "There" incorporates chamber music, which Billboard writer Jim Bessman says "chillingly portrays an incident of spousal abuse." While it was an older song, Van Peebles felt it had a modern relevance, commenting "It could have been called 'The O.J. Story. The juxtaposition of an elitist kind of music with my inner city voice takes it beyond the 'hood and shows that it's not just down-and-dirty people who beat their wives."

"Lilly Done The Zampoughi Everytime I Pulled Her Coatail" first appeared on Brer Soul, and "Just Don't Make No Sense" was previously recorded for As Serious as a Heart-Attack. "Quittin' Time" debuted in Van Peebles' 1972 production Don't Play Us Cheap, while "The Apple Stretching" first appeared in Van Peebles' 1982 production Waltz of the Stork, and was later covered by Grace Jones.

Many of Van Peebles' songs are delivered in sprechgesang. Allmusic writer Ed Hogan compares Van Peebles' vocals to "Louis Armstrong, the comedy albums of Bill Cosby from the '70s, and the wild antics of cartoon voice artists Mel Blanc and Hans Conreid ". Another Allmusic writer, Thom Jurek, compared Van Peebles' delivery to that of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Van Peebles describes his vocal style as "the old Southern style", which was influenced by protest singers he had heard growing up in South Chicago. Van Peebles also said that he was influenced by older forms of African-American music: " people like Blind Lemon Jefferson and the field hollers. I was also influenced by spoken word song styles from Germany that I encountered when I lived in France."

The music of Ghetto Gothic is varied, incorporating elements of classical music, hip hop, reggae, and blues. Van Peebles stated of the album's musical experimentation, "So many black artists are encouraged not to eat from the entire cornucopia of creative and technical options. I'm black; so what I do is black. Once you don't worry about that, you're free to manifest your artistry however you see it." Van Peebles' lyrics range from lighter, humorous themes to more socially conscious material, such as "Just Don't Make Sense", which focuses on the contradictions of the African American experience.