Perhaps the most ambitious project to emerge from the Peace Uv Mine camp, Radio Galaxy’s We Come In Peace was a welcome fusion of hip hop, soul, funk, jazz and whatever else that turned the idea of “conventional” sounding music on its ear.
About midway through H.I.S.D.’s The Weakend sessions my ears started pricking up at a few sounds that seemed pretty left of center compared to what the crew was working on. I asked Midas about them, and he mostly shrugged me off. Asked DJ Cozmos about them, and he was mostly on some “Yeah, you know. You know. You know.” And I didn’t know.
Just as The Weakend wrapped, I started hearing another voice on these untamed sounds – Spacebunny Jefferson. Mind you, she had a few bit parts on the projects that preceded this, but I wasn’t aware of the full range of her abilities until she was in an environment where she played the lead. At this stage, i’ll just say that it caught my attention. Understatement alert.
The first full song that I remember from the crew was something along the lines of “Take Those Panties Off”. Tried to find it on my hard drive for embarrassment purposes, but couldn’t find it. Also, they probably don’t want you to hear it. Their first almost-official single was a song called “The WOW”, which also mysteriously disappeared. That one was kinda nice though. Understandable, since they were still finding their sound in a process that was hardly formulaic or linear in any sense. Most of their songs are spawned from a combination of improvisation and clowning around. You see this randomness / playfulness permeate throughout the project.
Finally. Finally. Finally, we get an official single: “Out Of Control”. Uptempo and dancy. But don’t let the tone deceive you – the song is actually about something. Here’s where I veer off into a tangent – I had a private convo with Spacebunny one day years ago, specifically about her writing process. She actually broke down her approach to songwriting, and how she layers themes in her music. It was like putting on Blu-Blockers. I went back and listened to EVERYTHING in the catalog up until that point, and it seemed like brand new music again. I won’t divulge it here – we’ll save that for a discussion of its own – but you might want to go back and listen to everything again to see if it suddenly sounds different to you. End tangent.
We kinda sorta shot a video for “Out Of Control” that went like this:
Blahblahblah recording blahblahblah more recording.
The one downside to their loosely-constructed recording practices is that they couldn’t adhere to a specific stopping point, so we created one for them. These knuckleheads literally recorded and mixed the outro piece minutes before the album started loading. Sometime around the end of the process, we shot a video for “Feel Trip”, the official lead single:
We intentionally shot it in The Gold Room because it was more or less their natural habitat. Fortunately, this also caught the attention of certain folks on Pharrell’s “I Am Other” Youtube channel.
Album drops. Lives change. A legend is born. We Come In Peace is released.
Oh – and perhaps my favorite moment from the whole WCIP experience may have flown under the radar for some. A few months later Spacebunny celebrated her birthday. I somehow talked her into shooting a video to celebrate. But because i’m an evil bastard, I also convinced her to conquer one of her greatest fears – on camera. So we took a trip to the museum district and Spacebunny faced the wrath of…
…butterflies.
Shortly after the filming of this milestone in her young life, Spacebunny relapsed into her uncanny fear of butterflies.
