Time's Up (Living Colour Album)

''Time's Up'' is the second studio album by American rock band Living Colour, released on August 28, 1990, through Epic Records. It was the follow-up to their successful 1988 album '' Vivid''. ''Time's Up'' features a wide range of genres and also includes cameo appearances by Queen Latifah, Little Richard, Doug E. Fresh, Maceo Parker and James Earl Jones. The album reached gold status, peaking at #13 on the ''Billboard'' 200, and won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. It is the final album to feature Muzz Skillings on bass, though it was not his last release with the band (as he appeared on the ''Biscuits'' EP). In late February 2014, the album was reissued in Europe by Music On CD and is available once again.

Background

In 2015, Corey Glover explained, "''Time's Up'' was an interesting one, because we spent part of the time making ''Time's Up'' in California - we were in LA. We did some of the basic tracks in LA. And that was really weird, because we're New York guys. Hanging out in California and being very 'California' was very strange to us. We were staying in the Valley, and it felt like we were in school, because we had to get up in the morning and I met Will at what felt like the bus stop. It was like, 'OK, we've got to go to work.' And jogging around in California and hanging around in California - and hanging out with the Fishbone guys while we were out there. Just hanging out and trying to dig this California thing, it was very, very interesting. I think it does hold up. With a few exceptions, it might falter, but 'Time's Up' and 'Pride' and the stuff we still play today, I think it still holds up and still works. The song 'Time's Up' is about the environment, and we're ''still'' talking about the environment - and the record is 20 years old!"

Music

''Time's Up'' has been described as a hard rock, heavy metal, funk metal, and art rock album, with elements of hip hop, jazz, funk, jazz fusion, Delta blues, soul, and punk rock. According to Dele Fadele, Reid's guitar work throughout explores "crunchy riffs, white noise and atonality." Musical allusions to Public Enemy and Paul Simon appear on the record. Early subjects on the album concern personal and social problems, including drug dealing ("New Jack Theme"), environmental catastrophe ("Time's Up") and racism ("Pride"), whereas "Elvis Is Dead" calls into doubt Elvis Presley's reputation as 'the king of rock'.

The album opens with "Time's Up", a hardcore song, before moving to the Afrocentric-tinged "History Lesson", which uses cut-up samples to demonstrate African music being "for communication purposes". "Type" has been described as an unusual choice of lead single, due to its sophisticated, six-and-a-half minute length. "Pride" is reminiscent of Led Zeppelin. A jazz-rock song, "Elvis Is Dead" features a guest rap from Little Richard and a saxophone solo from Maceo Parker. One writer notes that it "throws more gasoline on the fire Public Enemy sent in Elvis Presley's direction the previous summer with ' Fight the Power'." "Type" and "Information Overload" feature complicated rhythms, while "Love Rears Its Ugly Head" is a funky, romantic song featuring a wah-wah guitar solo. "Under Cover of Darkness", featuring rapper Queen Latifah, was written on the subject of unprotected sex and features a pure jazz guitar solo from Reid. According to reviewer Alan Light, its "skittery, constricted arrangement highlights the band's previously buried jazz inflections." "Solace of You", a West African-style highlife love song featuring a reggae beat, is a diversion from the album's heavier topics, and musically reveals the group's African roots. Light highlights its "percolating township-jive groove built on Reid's shimmering guitar."

Critical reception

In ''The Village Voice'', Christgau named it the best art rock album since "Pink Floyd was in mourning", proving that the genre can "signify". He added: "Though the striking choruses and fancy structures are pretty Euro, the proximate model is Bad Brains sans Jah. And though MTV's millions have heard Reid's more panhuman messages before, they've rarely heard them expressed so coherently--or by a black person." ''Entertainment Weekly''s Greg Sandow praised Reid's corrosive guitar work, saying he "often leapfrogs into rhythmic hyperspace, sliding around the outline of a beat that for moments on end no one explicitly plays. Such complicated musical thinking is common in jazz but almost unknown in rock. Living Colour widens rock’s scope, introducing, in an album aimed at a wide audience, a tough- minded kind of music-making normally found only in far more intellectual art."

Dele Fadele of ''NME'' noted that Living Colour remained passionate about social issues and were able to "subvert the mainstream" so adeptly that the music sometimes resembles " FM rock", but added that they differ from groups like Bon Jovi and Heart through their direct, earnest lyrics and the soulful elements, with funk and house moves and hip hop beats being threaded into the music. Mark Putterford of '' Select'' deemed it more leftfield than ''Time's Up'', refusing to repeat its " funk-rock formula" and instead " wistingwith violent abandon through 180 degrees of musical subculture" with tough, early Van Halen-style rhythms and pointed lyrics. "Angrier, deeper, louder, more alive than ''Vivid''," wrote Alan Light of ''Rolling Stone''", "''Time's Up'' is an uncompromising declaration of subversive intent by a band that means to hang in for the long haul – and to make a difference."

In ''Spin Alternative Record Guide'' (1995), Chris Norris named it Living Colour's best album, partly for focusing more on music, thus "allowing the players in the quartet to step out a little". He highlighted the album's "small sonic treasures", such as the "vaporous guitar tones" at the end of "Pride", the harmolodic, "deconstructing" guitar solo from "Under Cover of Darkness", and Reid's "Adrian Belew-ish droning" in "In Another Life". In '' The Rough Guide to Rock'' (1999), Chris Wright deemed it a partial advance on ''Vivid'', but also "self-indulgent and inspiring by turns", writing that the album's sheer eclecticism "made it an interesting rather than a listenable experience". Also reviewing the album retrospectively, AllMusic's Greg Prato opined that it was less successful than ''Vivid'' because of its more challenging content, both musically and lyrically, but found it just as strong as its predecessor, commenting that "''Time's Up'' remains a convincing listen all these years later."

Accolades

In ''The Village Voice''s annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll for the year's best albums, ''Time's Up'' finished at number five. The album came in at number 18 on the 1990 top-25 'albums of the year list' in ''Kerrang!''. The album is listed in the book '' 501 Essential Albums of the 90s'' (2024); contributor Matthew Wilkening hailed it as "an impressively diverse and often complex album that expanded he band'sclaims further into punk, funk, jazz, soul, and hip-hop."

Grammy Awards

Track listing

Promo version

A special US advance promo version omitting "History Lesson", "Ology1" and "Tag Team Partners". Along with the CD, it was also pressed on transparent gold vinyl. Catalog number ESK 2171

Personnel

Living Colour
* Corey Glover – vocals, rhythm guitar on "Type"
* Vernon Reid – lead guitar
* Muzz Skillings – bass
* Will Calhoun – drums
Guest musicians
* Akbar Ali – strings
* Charles Burnham – strings
* Don Byron – clarinet, baritone saxophone
* Annette Daniels – background vocals
* D.K. Dyson – background vocals
* Eileen Folson – strings
* Doug E. Fresh – percussion, vocals
* Mick Jagger – background vocals
* Toshinobu Kubota – background vocals
* Little Richard – vocals
* Yubie Navas – background vocals
* Maceo Parker – saxophone
* Queen Latifah – vocals
* Alva Rogers – background vocals
* Rosa Russ – background vocals
* Francine Stasium – background vocals
* Reggie Workman – strings
* Derin Young – vocals, background vocals

Technical personnel
* John Aguto – assistant engineer
* Greg Calbi – mastering
* Alan Friedman – programming
* Lolly Grodner – assistant engineer
* Paul Hamingson – engineer, assistant engineer
* Jeff Lippay – assistant engineer
* Ed Stasium – producer, engineer, mixing
* Lex Van Pieterson – photography

Charts

Certifications

References

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1990 albums
Albums produced by Ed Stasium
Epic Records albums
Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance
Living Colour albums
Heavy metal albums by American artists
Art rock albums by American artists