Geechi Suede and Sonny Cheeba are Camp Lo. These two emcees from the
Bronx, NY entered the American hip hop scene with an insider slang that
bewildered listeners as they radiated the look of a bygone era of black
culture. In 1996, they collaborated with producer Ski and a host of
other contributors to create Uptown Saturday Night, featuring the
seminal single "Luchini (a.k.a. This is It)." While other 1990s rappers
referred to 1970s Blaxploitation culture, Camp Lo were self-described
"time travelers" who weaved the slang and style of a soulful past into
state-of-the-art lyrical flows.
Uptown Saturday Night is a tapestry of 1970s black popular culture and
1990s New York City hip hop. This volume will detail how the album's
fantastic world of "Coolie High" reflected classic films like Cooley
High and the Sidney Poitier film from which the album's title is
derived, and promoted vintage slang and fashion. The book features new
interviews with Camp Lo, producer Ski, Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul,
Ish from Digable Planets, and others, and offers musical and cultural
analyses that detail the development of the album and its essential
contributions to a post-soul aesthetic.