Theophilus London’s idol is Whitney Houston,… I got it, he even sampled Houston’s famous ‘I will always love you’ during his performance of ‘Love is real’ at Amoeba on Wednesday night. Is this what we call rap these days, these heavy dance-party beats, and these pre-recorded pop female vocals behind Theophilus’ gentle hip-hop delivery? The guy does not even have a rapper’s name, but that may be it is cleverly calculated, like the rest of his stylistic image?
I have to be honest, I don’t listen to rap or hip-hop, and I only know big names like Jay-Z or Kanye West…, but it was surprising to hear so many styles during London’s performance, his songs sounded more R&B, there even were some electro-pop-dance-floor numbers with pulsating beats that Michael Jackson (whom Theophilus admires of course) would not deny. MC Hammer even came to my mind at one point
Live, only back up by a DJ and a guitar player and sharply dressed with a black suit, a flashy red cap, and a lot of gold jewelry assorted to his glasses, he is certainly not Jackson-energy-level, but he knew how to wake up the crowd by inviting a little boy wearing a white hat on stage (very MJ), as well as a green-hair girl later on, before throwing free t-shirts to the public.
He was performing for the release of his album ‘Timez Are Weird These Days’ just out a day before, but many people seemed to already know all the lyrics.
In everything I have read about him, there are a few words that keep coming back, connection and networking. He effectively knows Beyonce’s sister Solange Knowles, Mark Ronson and Damon Albarn, and for this new album, he has worked with Santigold's John Hill and TV On The Radio's Dave Sitek (you could kind of hear Sitek's fingerprints on some songs), as well as indie stars Holly Miranda and Sara Quin of Tegan and Sara, who are guest vocalists on respectively the two tracks ‘Love Is Real’ and ‘Why Even Try’.
The cover of his album is modeled after Leon Ware’s 1982 album (a soul music singer who wrote much of Marvin Gaye’s ‘I want you’ album and produced Michael Jackson’s single ‘I wanna be where you are’), but he also said to be inspired by listening to Morrissey or obscure guy like Lo-fi songwriter R. Stevie Moore.
So Theophilus London is present everywhere in the music world, he sure knows how to surround himself and he wears his influences on his sleeve cover, but during his performance I was not really hearing something I hadn’t heard before. However, as the opening song of the album says (‘Last Name London’), his personal pop-hip-hop-dance mix is all over the tracks.