Penny For Your Thoughts With … MINT CONDITION
PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS… WITH MINT CONDITION
Soul band Mint Condition’s new CD gives technology some soul. Presented by Electronic Urban Report.
It’s a rarity in contemporary urban music, where a band of musicians - musicians that play instruments - create five successful studio albums, more than a dozen hit singles, world tours and collabos with some of the biggest names in music. It is a lone example that falls under one condition - Mint Condition.
The band, at its commercial pinnacle in the early ’90s, catapulted to fame with their hit “Breakin’ My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes).” With lead singer Stokley Williams’ treble powerhouse vocals and the funk, R&B, pop hybrid sound the band was the ultimate of a generation and has since become the model of modern R&B.
With their new disc, “E-Life,” Williams, Jeffrey Allen, Ricky Kinchen, Homer O’Dell, and Lawrence Waddell, move into the techno-age with a very solid old-school blend. The five-man band is currently doing select dates in promotion of the new disc, but EUR’s Lee Bailey caught up with bass man Kinchen and keyboardist Waddell about the new project and its inspiration.
“Its everyday situational stuff,” Waddell began in explaining the disc’s title. “But in the context of today’s e-world; the world of text messaging, cell phones, MySpace. Nowadays you meet people on MySpace, so the relationship may have started on MySpace. It’s that type of world now.”
Band mate Kinchen admitted that he was rather caught up in that e-world, spending much of his time on MySpace, in fact.
“At one point, I wasn’t getting any work done in the studio,” he admitted. “It was kind of affecting my kids and that’s kind of the intro of “Baby Boy Baby Girl.” It was taking away from me doing other things and I had to kind of get my life together, it’s summertime, I need to focus on my kids a little bit more and making sure I’m taking them to the park and everything, instead of e-mailing all day.”
That epiphany sparked the lead single which features Anthony Hamilton.
“I always wanted to work with him,” Kinchen said. “He was the one who came through and was feeling the project and kind of helped us out. He has kids and he could relate to the whole thing.”
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