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Wanda Dee (born April 12, 1963 as Lawanda McFarland) is an American hip hop artist.
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Wanda Dee (born April 12, 1963 as Lawanda McFarland) is an American hip hop artist.
Lawanda McFarland grew up in the Bronx, New York. While still a teenager, she became the first female hip hop DJ as the protégée of hip hop DJ Kool Herc, who gave her the stage name "Wanda Dee". She was eventually introduced to Afrika Bambaataa, who inducted her into his Universal Zulu Nation. Alongside of her boyfriend/business partner, rapper Richard Sisco ("Sisco Kid"), she appeared in Beat Street , a 1984 film about the hip hop sub-culture produced by Harry Belafonte. [1] [ unreliable source? ] [2] [ unreliable source? ] Dee and Sisco's relative success - she received many offers to go on tour while he did not - contributed to the pair breaking up.[ citation needed ] At the time, Dee had already met Eric Floyd, her future husband and manager. [2]
Floyd encouraged her to switch from the turntables to the microphone and in 1986, she released her first single, "Blue Eyes", produced by British hit factory Stock Aitken Waterman. [2] In 1989, she achieved commercial success[ clarification needed ] with "The Goddess"/"To the Bone". [1] The publication of a full album was hampered by disagreements with Tuff City Records, Dee's distributor at the time. [2]
In 1990 and 1991, respectively, British music duo The KLF - Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty - used unauthorized samples from "To the Bone" in the "stadium house version" of their tracks "What Time Is Love?" and "Last Train To Trancentral". When manager Eric Floyd by chance heard the former track at a disco, he sued Drummond and Cauty for copyright infringement. [2] A 1993 article in Beat magazine quotes Floyd:
I'd never heard of these people and they'd never asked Dee's permission to use her voice. They'd taken off her biggest selling rap single 'To The Bone' - the record opens up with Dee saying 'I wanna see you sweat' - and sampled it right off the record and put it on What Time is Love?. It wasn't until I went to sue Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty that I discovered they had also taken from the same record the line 'come on boy do you wanna ride?' and slapped that on Last Train to Trancentral. [...] they think it's OK to steal other people's material, by-passing other people's publishing companies and copyright, putting it into their own records, using their own studio wizardry, in releasing it to the masses. But they'd just gone too far this time." [3]
The KLF agreed to a settlement: Dee received a payment, a share in royalties and co-writing credits on the U.S. release of the album The White Room . Under the agreement, Dee also appeared in the "Stadium House" video to "Last Train To Trancentral". [3] Drummond and Cauty also agreed to produce a track for Dee's upcoming solo album,[ citation needed ] but this collaboration never materialised. Dee claimed, "I wasn't INVITED into The KLF, I was IGNITED!" [2]
After The KLF retired (and deleted their back catalogue) in early 1992, Dee took off on a two-year concert tour that spanned 150 cities in 90 countries. The show, dubbed "The KLF Experience featuring Wanda Dee" or "The Voice of KLF, Wanda Dee", combined the KLF's pre-recorded music with her own live vocals and lavish costumes. [1] [2] [3] Drummond and Cauty, who were displeased by Dee's use of the KLF moniker, requested that their U.S. distribution company, Arista Records, issue a cease and desist order, but the company refused, estimating that an international tour would only boost their sale of KLF material. [1] Dee's repeated claim that she had been an integral or even the decisive part in the KLF's success [1] [2] raised controversy among observers. [4]
Ben Butler, in an interview for The Big Issue Australia , asked Jimmy Cauty for his thoughts on "the act that was doing the rounds several years ago that called itself the KLF, but didn't feature either Bill Drummond or yourself [Cauty]". Cauty responded
I actually felt more sorry for the band than the audience. We did write to them to ask them to reconsider and got this amazing letter in return, they really thought they WERE the KLF, and without the Wanda Dee sample we would never have sold a single record. 9 out of 10 for total insanity. [5]
In the early 1990s, Dee signed a multi-album record deal with her previous producers Stock & Waterman. A debut album was produced but the release came to a halt when Stock & Waterman's partnership disbanded in 1993. [1] [2] In 1994, still riding on the KLF success, Dee published the single "I Wanna See You Sweat" with German record company ZYX. [1] [2]
In 2003, Dee formed her own record label, Goddess Empire, and finally published her debut album, The Goddess Is Here. The same year, she also participated in the Zulu Nation's 30th anniversary performance. [2]
James Francis Cauty, also known as Rockman Rock, is an English artist and musician, best known as one-half of the duo The KLF, co-founder of The Orb and as the man who burnt £1 million.
The White Room is the fourth and final studio album by British electronic music group The KLF, released on 3 March 1991. The album features versions of the band's hit singles, including "What Time Is Love?", "3 a.m. Eternal", and "Last Train to Trancentral".
Chill Out is the third studio album by British electronic music group The KLF, released on 5 February 1990. It is an ambient-styled concept album featuring an extensive selection of samples, portraying a mythical night-time journey throughout the U.S. Gulf Coast states, beginning in Texas and ending in Louisiana. Chill Out was conceived as a continuous piece of music, with original KLF music interwoven with samples from songs by Elvis Presley, Fleetwood Mac, Acker Bilk, Van Halen, 808 State and field recordings of Tuvan throat singers.
This discography lists the key British and notable international releases of The KLF and the other pseudonyms of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty. It also details the other releases on their independent record label, KLF Communications, by KLF-spinoff Disco 2000 and Space. In the United Kingdom—their home country—Drummond and Cauty released six albums and a wide array of 12 " singles on KLF Communications. In other territories their material was typically issued under licence by local labels.
Disco 2000 was a British pop band, a side project of The KLF. Vocals were handled by Cress, then-wife of KLF co-founder Jimmy Cauty, and "Mo". Between 1987 and 1989, Disco 2000 released three singles on the KLF Communications label, none of which entered the top 75 of the UK Singles Chart.
Who Killed The JAMs? is the second studio album by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, and the final one under the JAMs moniker before renaming themselves The KLF. Similar in style to the preceding 1987 , the album is a fusion of hip hop, drum machines and samples of a diversity of musical works, although in general the samples are more covertly integrated here than they are in 1987.
"Last Train to Trancentral" is a song released, in different mixes, as a series of singles by British electronic band The KLF, including "Last Train to Trancentral ". A commercially successful single of April 1991, it reached number two on the UK Singles Chart, number one on the UK Dance Singles Chart and achieved international top ten placings. It is a central song within The KLF's work, and is distinctive for an uplifting string-synthesiser break.
"What Time Is Love?" is a song released, in different mixes, as a series of singles by the band the KLF. It featured prominently and repeatedly in their output from 1988 to 1992 and, under the moniker of 2K, in 1997. In its original form, the track was an instrumental electronic dance anthem; subsequent reworkings, with vocals and additional instrumentation, yielded the international hit singles "What Time Is Love? " (1990), and "America: What Time Is Love?" (1991), which respectively reached number 5 and number 4 in the UK Singles Chart, and introduced the KLF to a mainstream international audience.
"Justified & Ancient" is a song by British band The KLF. It was featured on their 1991 album, The White Room, but its origins date back to the duo's debut album, 1987 .
Shag Times is a UK compilation and remix double album released in 1989 by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu. The album also introduced Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty's new incarnation – and one which would become considerably more famous – The KLF.
Brilliant were a British pop/rock group active in the 1980s. Although not commercially successful and mauled by the critics, they remain notable because of the personnel involved – Martin Glover a.k.a. Youth of Killing Joke and subsequently a top producer/remixer; Jimmy Cauty, later to find fame and fortune as one half of The KLF; and Ben Watkins a.k.a. Juno Reactor. Equally notable was their management, their record company A&R manager, and songwriting and production team.
"Doctorin' the Tardis" is a novelty single by the Timelords. The song is predominantly a mash-up of the Doctor Who theme music and Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll " with sections from "Blockbuster!" by Sweet. The single was not well received by critics but was a commercial success, hitting number one on the UK and New Zealand singles charts, and reaching the top 10 in Australia, Finland, Ireland and Norway.
"Whitney Joins the JAMs" is a song and 1987 single by the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu. The song, released on the JAMs' independent label KLF Communications, is built around plagiarised samples of Whitney Houston in which—thanks to studio technology—she "joins the JAMs".
"Down Town" was a 1987 release by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu. The song is gospel music driven by house music rhythms, incorporating a sample of Petula Clark's 1964 single "Downtown".
The Moody Boys or Moody Boyz are Tony Thorpe's UK-based record production and remix outfit, active since 1988.
The KLF are a British electronic band formed in London in 1987. Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty began by releasing hip hop-inspired and sample-heavy records as the JAMs. As the Timelords, they recorded the British number-one single "Doctorin' the Tardis", and documented the process of making a hit record in a book The Manual . As the KLF, Drummond and Cauty pioneered stadium house and, with their 1990 LP Chill Out, the ambient house genre. The KLF released a series of international hits on their own KLF Communications record label and became the biggest selling singles act in the world in 1991.
"Burn the Bastards" is a 1988 song by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, from their second, and final before changing names, album Who Killed The JAMs?. The "bastards" of the title are copies of The JAMs first album, 1987 , which Drummond and Cauty burnt on a bonfire in a Swedish field after a copyright dispute with the Swedish pop group ABBA. The song was released as a single, along with a separate single of remixes titled "Burn the Beat". Both singles were credited to The KLF, marking a change of name and with it a change of musical genre, from The JAMs' sample-fuelled political hip-hop to The KLF's upbeat and uptempo house music.
"The Magnificent" is a 1995 song by the One World Orchestra, recorded for the War Child charity compilation, The Help Album, which was released to raise funds for children affected by the Bosnian War. As with the other contributions to the album, it was recorded on 4 September 1995 and released five days later. It coincided with the screening of Drummond and Cauty's film about the K Foundation's burning of one-million British pounds, and the duo fielded questions from audiences relating the subjects.
"I Wanna 1-2-1 With You" is a mobile telephone-themed novelty-pop song by "Solid Gold Chartbusters", written by musicians Guy Pratt and Jimmy Cauty, and comedy writer Lloyd Stanton. The lead singer was Denise Palmer; the sleeve also credits Tessa Niles for vocals and Debbie Chazen as the voice of a switchboard operator. Due to the involvement of Cauty (KLF) and Pratt, Virgin Records touted Solid Gold Chartbusters as "The World's First Novelty Supergroup".
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