R&B Bridgez: Celebrating the Multifaceted James Mtume + UB Interview

Today we celebrate the late great James Mtume, who passed away today four years ago on January 9th, 2022.

UB spoke to the legend about his catalog and so much more!

Born and raised in Philadelphia, James Mtume earned musical fame, starting in jazz with greats such as Miles Davis during the early 1970’s as well as with father, saxophonist Jimmy Heath.

Mtume was a star swimmer at Overbrook High School, where he became the first Black backstroke champion in the Amateur Athletic Union’s Middle Atlantic District.

In 1966, he entered Pasadena City College on a swimming scholarship.

In California, he joined the US Organization, a Black nationalist cultural group that introduced the holiday Kwanzaa, and he took an African last name: Mtume, Swahili for “messenger.”

Around this time, he also turned seriously to music and made two jazz albums thematically focused on Black cultural identity.

The first, Kawaida, was made under his uncle’s name, and also featured his father along with jazz legends Herbie Hancock and Don Cherry.

However, Mtume was a major contributor to the album, not only lending percussion and vocals but also writing all of the songs.

During this time, Mtume developed a close relationship with renowned poet and activist Amiri Baraka, with whom he recorded a spoken word album.

At Baraka’s request, Mtume moved back east to help elect Newark’s first Black mayor, Kenneth Gibson.

Mtume established himself among the elite, working with jazz lions such as Duke Ellington and Sonny Rollins and avant garde leaders such as McCoy Tyner and Pharoah Sanders.

Ultimately, he joined Miles Davis’s band in 1971.

In 1972, Mtume made his recording debut as a bandleader with Alkebu-Lan: Land of the Blacks, credited to the Mtume Umoja Ensemble.

It opened with a spoken manifesto that praised “the role of Black music as a functional organ in the struggle for national liberation.”

He worked with Davis until 1975, touring and appearing on several albums, including “On the Corner.”

Miles Davis credited Mtume with influencing his turn towards Afrocentricity and even named a tune “Mtume” on the “Get Up With It” album.

Years later, Mtume teamed up with fellow songwriter/producer Reggie Lucas, producing hits for Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway (“The Closer I Get To You”, “Back Together Again”), Phyllis Hyman (“You Know How To Love Me) and Stephanie Mills (the Grammy winning “Never Knew Love Like This Before”).

As a writing and producing team, the Mtume/Lucas collaboration yielded nearly a dozen gold and platinum records.

In 1978, Flack’s “Blue Light In The Basement” album reached platinum status on the strength of the single “The Closer I Get To You.” The O’Jays’ “Identify Yourself” also went platinum.

Mtume co-produced gold albums for Phyllis Hyman, Stephanie Mills and Flack and Donny Hathaway.

Mtume’s self-named group was established in 1981 with the album “Kiss This World Goodbye,” which was followed by ”ln Search Of The Rainbow Seekers.”

But it was the record-breaking title track from the group’s third album, “Juicy Fruit” that brought the group international acclaim and its first gold record.

Collectively the group Mtume yielded 11 charting singles but earned critical acclaim with, “Juicy Fruit,” a #1 R&B chart-topper for eight weeks, and Billboard’s Hot 100 at #45 as well as being Certified Gold.

“It depresses me to see so many black acts going through an identity crisis,” stated James Mtume to Billboard. “‘Juicy Fruit’ sold more than one million copies without crossing over. “We’re getting so involved and so concerned with crossover that we’re losing our face. It’s very sad, because we have very few things left to support our identity any more.”

A white reporter asked Mtume if he felt he had “lost something” because “Juicy Fruit” didn’t crossover. “Why should I?” Mtume countered. “Crossover to what?” As a #1 R&B single, ‘Juicy Fruit” out sold the #l pop record. Crossover to what, indeed.”

Mtume followed it with the release of “You, Me and He” in 1984.

An occasionally rocking album that more often capitalizes on “Juicy Fruits’ ” seductive grooves.

The nucleus of Mtume’s group includes Mtume on lead vocals and keyboards, bassist Raymond Johnson, keyboardist Phillip Fields and vocalist Tawatha. “You, Me and He,” reached #2 on the Billboard R&B chart.

Mtume was another representative of a most welcome group on the street/pop scene — players with jazz backgrounds who appreciate popular music and can temper their own training while upgrading the quality of commercial music.

Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock were the most visible examples of the trend, but Mtume forged his own unique blend of funk and jazz on “You, Me and He.”

Sax solos on the cuts “You Me and He” and “To Be Or Not To Bop” (The title of Dizzy Gillespie’s autobiography) are provided by ace reedman Sonny Fortune, and the solos, though thoroughly modal, fit perfectly in the innately danceable tunes. It was only a matter of time before increasingly sophisticated audiences got hip to the limitless boundaries of certain jazz elements which do fit in dance music and Mtume paved the way.

He adopted a term dear to the hearts of jazzers for his own sound, dubbing it “sophisti-funk.” “What I’m interested in doing now is re-introducing some of the aspects of the jazz world that could be so helpful in the contemporary popular music world. See, a pop cat can’t play with that kind of restraint and understanding. That’s not a condemnation. It’s just, here’s a guy (Fortune) who’s played all his life. We came in the studio. I played it down once or twice. What I wanted was a feeling of alienation and distance, but like a beauty that you couldn’t touch, and that’s what I got. And 1 could only get that from that kind of situation.”

With jazz players, Mtume felt, “you’re bringing in another intelligence. That’s what I’m beginning to do. On each album, now, on the last cut on side B, I’m going to have a song that begins to lead into the ideas that I have in terms of fusing the two worlds.” Mtume’s contribution was “To Be Or Not To Bop.” “. . . that is the question, whether we funk or not,” as Mtume stated. “And that’s fusing hip-hop culture with be-bop. We’re bringing that kind of thing into focus. On the next album there’s a thing called “E-volution,” and it’s gonna be a combination of African culture and jazz and funk.”

Mtume was not one to sit around after finishing one project. “Herbie and I had about a three-hour conversation, because he and I may be doing some production on Miles’ next record. Miles had called me, and to me, there’d be no greater pleasure than to put him right back in the thick of things again. You know, you never lose contact with the people who were important to your instruction and development. Obviously, that’s where I got my Ph.D, that’s what I tell people. They say, ’Where’d you go to school?’ and I say “Miles Davis University.” Mtume believed in transferring that education. Aside from being in demand by other artists as a producer, Mtume was one of the most sought after music lecturers in the industry.

His classic, “Juicy Fruit” has been used by artists like The Notorious B.I.G. and Keyshia Cole.

It continues to find a new generation as it now circulates through video games like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, while the group’s track “C.O.D. (I’ll Deliver)” off the You, Me and He album was featured in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV.

“I’m not against sampling,” Mtume once told Billboard. “I just don’t think technology should be a crutch for you not being able to play [an instrument]. It should be something that enhances your ability to play, not a substitute for it.”

Mtume’s later credits include co-producing Mary J. Blige‘s Share My World and K-Ci and Jo-Jo’s Love Always in 1997.

Mtume divorced himself from the R&B industry for seven years when he noticed technology taking precedence over musicianship. “It wasn’t about writing and [playing] music anymore,” he once recalled. “It became totally a question of mechanics, loops, and [beats per minute].”

Enticed back into the industry in 1993 as the composer for the Fox Network TV series “New York Undercover,” Mtume began a quest to teach burgeoning artists his craft.

Through Natalie’s, the club segment of the show, Mtume brought in classic R&B acts to do live performances of their new hits and contemporary artists to perform current songs and remakes of classics.

“I set [new artists] up to do remakes because wanted to acclimate their ear to what it sounds like to have real orchestration, to show them that they too can be classic artists,” explains Mtume.

After rehearsing with each artist with full band accompaniment and putting down the tracks live, Mtume found that many of the younger artists “could sing much better than their records have allowed them to be heard,” and many had never received vocal coaching from the producers they work with.

“Based on what [the artists] tell me, lot of the producers just lay down track and say, ‘OK, sing,’ “stated Mtume. “Producing vocals is like developing a blueprint. Sometimes an artist rolls into slump, so you have to find certain notes to substitute for that note. [These new artists] are not getting that.

With the experience gained from a performance at Natalie’s, many artists enlisted Mtume’s expertise for their projects after. From Johnny Gill, Gerald Levert, and Keith Sweat to Mary J. Blige and K-Ci Hailey albums, as well as remake singles from both artists on “Rhythm Of The Games” R&B soundtrack to for the Olympics.

He collaborated with D’Angelo for a remake of Eddie Kendricks’ “Girl You Need A Change Of Mind” for the “Get On The Bus” soundtrack. Bad Boy act 112 started performing a thrilling rendition of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “After The Love Is Gone” during its concerts, after having performed the track under Mtume’s tutelage on “New York Undercover.”

“‘New York Undercover’ helped me bridge the gap between our generations, because right now there is no real dialogue between the older and new artists,” stated Mtume. “Right now in R&B we have a situation where we have a bunch of artists with hit records but no hit careers. Their success is being measured by records, so we have people who are finished after three albums. That doesn’t happen with white music. They have acts who are over 50 still performing— without a hit record!”

“I want to develop artists who can still work even if they don’t have a record out,” continues Mtume. “With age comes wisdom, and with youth comes energy. Energy without direction is chaos, and wisdom without energy is stagnation. We need to combine the two.”

Mtume rounded out 1994-1999 with TV’s New York Undercover.

Some of The Best Performances!

Mtume began to work as an on-air radio personality in the mid-90s, first at New York City’s KISS 98.7 FM and then on WBLS 107.5 FM.

He was a co-host from 1995 to 2013 on the weekly show “Open Line,” where he discussed politics, activism, news, and culture.

Mtume also recorded a TED Talk in 2018, “Our Common Ground in Music,” in which he discussed “the cross-pollination of culture, politics and art.”

James Mtume’s career had a profound and varied influence on music and the music industry, shaping the sound and sensibility of multiple generations of music.

Moreover, he was not only a musical pioneer but an influential advocate and activist for Black culture and history.

Mtume is survived by his wife, Kamili Mtume; his brother, Jeffrey Forman; two sons, Faulu Mtume and Richard Johnson; four daughters, Benin Mtume, Eshe King, Ife Mtume and Sanda Lee and six grandchildren.

In 2023, the legend was honored with a street bearing his name in his hometown of Philadelphia, PA. It can be found at the 1500 block of Wharton Street in South Philadelphia.

Aries from UB spoke with the legendary James Mutme in 2020 about his amazing career, his involvement with New York Undercover, his classic Juicy Fruit and filming Unsung.

Mtume also gives advice to younger artists and gives us his thoughts on the current state of R&B.

Plus Mutme talks about the classic “You, Me and He” and more!

UrbanBridgez.com: New York Undercover was actually one of my favorite shows when I was younger. A lot of people don’t know your involvement in it.
Mtume: Right, I was the musical composer for that show. I did all of the music for all of the seasons. We call it scoring, chase scenes, love scenes, suspense. I was actually the only black composure doing a dramatic TV series. They had black composure’s for television, but they were doing comedies. This dramatic series captured that spirit in New York man. With Black and Latino leads, that was unheard of. When I was composing it, I created this little special segment called Natalie’s. A club where I could bring in young artists and have them redo a classic. Like Mary J. Blige did Natural Woman and Xscape did All This Love. So when I brought in a classic artist, I would have them do one of their hits. Like BB King did The Thrill is Gone. So it was a great experience. As a matter of fact, out of everything that I’ve been fortunate to be connected with, New York Undercover is the most special for me. Because it gave me the opportunity, to put a black sound on television. In a way that it had never been done. I wanted to make sure that if you watched that show, you couldn’t watch without listening to the music.

UrbanBridgez.com: Exactly! It was such a dope concept. Your production to me was kind of ahead of your time. With like Juicy Fruit alone. How did you come up with ideas for production back then?
Mtume: That’s a great question brother. One of the incredible lessons I learned standing next to Miles Davis. Was always push the boundaries and when you’re hearing something new reach for it. When you hear new sounds in your head, you’re quite not sure what it is. You just know where it is know what I mean and you have to go down there and find it. So I would say that is a very interesting point that you raise, among my peers when I was coming up. I started hearing the combination of drum machines and synthesizers. Probably before most kats that came out of R&B, Jazz and Funk. By the time Juicy Fruit came up, nobody had ever done anything like that before. I’m not bragging, I’m just saying.

UrbanBridgez.com: Exactly, all facts.
Mtume: I thought it was flowing and it worked out. That’s something you don’t know when you’re trying to something new. People may not feel it the way I felt it, but fortunately they did. Once Biggie sampled it, it propelled our music into the next generation. Now we’re like three generations deep with that beat.

UrbanBridgez.com: What do you think it is about that production that makes people still interested, no matter who samples it or how they use it?
Mtume: I think the combination of that beat and the incredible performance by Tawatha Agee singing the lead. It touched people where they live, in the heart. Here’s an interesting side-bar; when I took Juicy Fruit to the record label, they didn’t want to release it. I had to really fight. So they was like we’ll release it to the quiet storm after midnight hours. What happened after the first week brother they were getting so many calls from program directors. They were forced to release the record as a whole, including play during the day. They were really forced. When we talk about Juicy Fruit, that record was really almost never heard.

UrbanBridgez.com: Jumping to another classic of yours, You, Me and He. My mother use to wear that out! That is such a great song.
Mtume: Thank you. You, Me and He was deep, because I flipped the narrative. In the love triangle, you always hear the brother like oh baby I’m in love with the secretary. You never hear it from a woman’s point of view. So I wrote it to be from a females point of view. There’s another in my life. He’s my lover and I’m your wife. You, me and he, what we gonna do, baby? (laughs) So yeah that’s what that one was about.

UrbanBridgez.com: Was there anything that wasn’t covered with your Unsung, that you wanted included?
Mtume: You know what, that’s a great question. Let me start off by saying this, I had turned Unsung down for six years. I just didn’t really want to do it. The reason why I didn’t was because I just felt that there were so many people that I admire. That I felt were way more deserving than me. I’m not trying to sound corny or humble, but that’s the truth. So my son was like look dad you have to stop it. You could miss the opportunity and all that information would be lost. So I decided to do it and Unsung told me that it wasn’t just about the music. They pitched it more like a biopic. To cover everything from growing up, to being a black political host, the whole thing. They cover New York Undercover, etc. So I was quite pleased, because they never did an Unsung the way they did mine.

UrbanBridgez.com: Well much deserved! You did need one that was original, because you’re an original artist.
Mtume: Thank you man.

UrbanBridgez.com: I love the work you did with Mary J. Blige on Share My World and with K-Ci and JoJo. What was it like working with those artist, being apart of the new generation?
Mtume: Oh man, thank you so much. Working with the younger artists…it’s funny because I’m saying they’re the younger artists but now they’re the elders of the new generation. One the the things that ran through all of the young artists that I worked with. They were all extremely hard working and I’m going to point them out. Mary J. Blige, K-Ci and D’Angelo were the hardest working out of everybody man. A lot of people realized that there was really a role for producing vocals after they did New York Undercover. It’s like a lost art now. Producing vocals is like an art. You have to guide the artist voice to their highest potential. A lot of people do records and just let the artists go in and sing you know. You have to guide them.

UrbanBridgez.com: Speaking of that sort of thing, what do you think is missing from today’s R&B?
Mtume: I think I would have to answer it this way. There isn’t enough originality now. It’s too many copy cats today. It’s like they’ll sound like the artist that came out the week before. Copying someone else’s style will get you there. But being an original, keeps you there. I see a lot of black artists, being reduced to hit records without hit careers. They have one or two hits and they’re gone. Careers are based on longevity.

UrbanBridgez.com: Who are some of your current favorite artists that you enjoy?
Mtume: I enjoy SZA, the one I enjoy the most is J. Cole. I also love Kendrick Lamar. One of the things I find interesting about these rappers. Is an interesting syndrome is happening, a lot of them are being produced by Hip Hop jazz artists. Like Kendrick with Terrace Martin. Robert Glasper is another one, where there is a new sound coming out of Hip Hop. Original music is being created. I see a lot of rappers when they perform, have a live band as well.

UrbanBridgez.com: You worked with some jazz greats from Miles Davis to Dizzy Gillespie, can you just tell us any story you want about working with one of them?
Mtume: Okay, of course the greatest story I can tell is Miles Davis. I remember for me personally, it was my first tour with him. I took a solo when we were in Europe. And the joint went crazy! So we’re walking off stage and I’m kind of feeling myself, I’m a young buck. He walked up behind me and said man that ain’t nothing. My little balloon got popped, I’m like what? He said man, stop playing what you know. Start playing what you don’t know. What he meant by that was stop playing stuff that you know works. Find a different avenue to go down to get to your destination. Miles was incredible, he was my mentor man. One of the things about jazz musicians, you can’t step on a jazz stage and not know your craft. You can’t think, you gotta know. I’ve always respected that about the art-form of bebop and jazz. They say you can’t fake the funk, well you really can’t fake being jazzy. You’ll get embarrassed too quick (laughs).

UrbanBridgez.com: What does Black Music mean to you?
Mtume: It’s the greatest resource we have, is black music. Our music has gotten us through, every troubling time. It’s our thermometer, it tells us what the temperature is in our community.

UrbanBridgez.com: What advice do you give to this new generation of artists?
Mtume: What I would like to say to any young artist. The most important thing you want to do, is to find your own voice. Find your own path, that’s the only way you can extend your career. Also master the electronics don’t totally depend on them, don’t let them master you.

UrbanBridgez.com: Any last words for your fans?
Mtume: The biggest lesson I’ve learned being a jazz musician. I was able to translate that into R&B, Funk and Pop. Greatest thing you can be is yourself, because everybody else is already taken. Be you and follow your heart.

Take A Trip Down Memory Lane with Mutme!