What I know as Freestyle is late 80's (often Latin) dance music. Hopefully that's what you're asking about. It was very popular in NY/NJ and Miami. A lot of it is pretty cheesy, but brings back good memories. Some popular examples: Spring Love - Stevie B Silent Morning - Noel I Can't Wait - Nu Shooz Point of No Return - Expose Fascinated - Company B One Way Love - TKA Show Me - The Cover Girls I Wonder if I Take You Home, Can You Feel the Beat, All Cried Out - Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam
Oh yes! I think I get it, songs like Let the Music Play by Shannon. Without knowing this was called freestyle I would have probably tried to it in the dance pop category (could "Into the Groove" by Madonna be classified as freestyle?). It also doesn't sound too different from the most funky and danceable synthpop (I'm thinking of "Nineteen" by Paul Hardcastle), or the most catchy electronic body music. Was the style rooted in the dance scene or was it more a pop edge of new wave? And did it evolve into something else or did it just fade?
Let the Music Play was definitely an early example. It was rooted in the NYC/ Miami dance club scene. Some better info than I can give: Freestyle music - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia » A few more examples: (some pretty terrible : ) One More Try - Timmy T Bad of the Heart - George Lamond Dreamboy/Dreamgirl - Cynthia and Johnny O Together Forever - Lisette Melendez
I'm probably not familiar enough with the genre, but I think at the time there was a really big gray area between freestyle, electro, dance pop, hi-nrg, italo disco, synthpop, industrial, ebm, etc. Or maybe my ear is not fine enough. I'm not able to tell, for example, if a song like You Spin me Round by Dead or Alive is more freestyle, synthpop or hi-nrg, even though I understand from the historic part that I read on wikipedia that they definitely don't belong to the freestyle scene.
Trying to adjust my freestyle detector, I would also like your feedback on Peace and Love, Inc. by Information Society which Wikipedia lists as a freestyle band. I know them as a synthpop/industrial band. Peace and Love, Inc. is neither, though. Is it freestyle?
Freestyle is predominantly Puerto Rican artists singing about relationships. Information Society from Minnesota with their science fiction influence doesn't really fit to me. edit: I see that their song Running was a hit in NYC Latin dance clubs which is where the connection is.
In the Detroit area it was very popular amongst kids of Middle-Eastern and Eastern-European descent, we sold it mostly on cassette and mostly compilations. Mic Mac, SPG and TKA were labels that put out a lot of them. The Atlantic records comp. "Dance Trax Vol. 2" was a steady seller.
Some of the tracks from atypical artist got re-mixed every possible way and some of those freestyle mixes caught on.
Great album, one of my favorites! But yes, maybe just synthpop for that album, they did however toy a little with the darker edge after...
We're talking about a style of pop dance music created primarily by Latinos, heyday of the mid 80s through the very early 90s. I think of Shannon's "Let The Music Play" as probably the first big freestyle hit. Lisa Lisa's early records were also some of the earlier big mainstream freestyle hits. In NYC, things like Information Society (and even New Order and Depeche Mode) crossed over because a lot of the people who listened to freestyle liked them, and they fit in sonically. Here's one of my favorite freestyle hits:
Absolutely rooted in the dance scene. It was largely a place in time. I don't think it evolved into anything. I think when the kids who listened grew up and started families, the new freestyle hits pretty much stopped coming. But I would say dance music into the 90s probably continued to be influenced by freestyle. Things like "Show Me Love" by Robin S and "What Is Love" by Haddaway.
I know Mickey Garcia personally who was president of Mic Mac Records. They were a big freestyle label back in the day and had a lot of the popular artists listed here. He signed my cousin Cipriano in the mid 90's and they put out a single for him. By that time freestyle was dead but my cousin had more of a euro dance style which was big at the time. Here's a few of his songs Cipriano Featuring Michelle - Lover Boy (Euro Dance / Pop Radio Version) » Cipriano Feat. Michelle -- Reach For The Top / Lover Boy (1996) »
Freestyle is the generic, ambiguous label for the genre of mostly Latin based dance music, based on synthesized beats and instrumentation, as it were. Later songs, around the mid 90's actually used sampled beats, most notably the drums for Afrika Bambaataa's Planet Rock. I'm familiar with this because as a former club style DJ I used to play this. I still have a few of my freestyle genre records.
No kidding, everyone from Pet Shop Boys to Madonna, a little 'Latin' flavor, it worked well with some bands
Check out this awesome freestyle mix Frankie Bones did a few years ago for Discogs. Frankie Bones - Discogs 19 Freestyle »
Can you give me one example of a freestyle track by those bands? I'm particularly interested in understanding if and where the Information Society went freestyle. Actually my recent interest in this genre was triggered by an article I read about them. I think like New Order they incorporated some house influence in their later music, but whereas New Order are officially related to the madchester scene, nobody is brazen enough to use such british-connoted terms as "baggy", for an american band. I wonder if their attribution to the freestyle genre is just because of the lack of proper tags form american alternative dance acts.
I don't know if Information Society ever went freestyle, but as @c-eling above pointed out, maybe running was influenced.
You have to remember the context. Pre 1992 "alternative" wasn't a thing in the mainstream. I remember hearing "Bizarre Love Triangle" and "What's On Your Mind" mixed in with legit freestyle hits in the NY metropolitan area on radio stations where dance music was the focus, and it was all accepted by that audience as "club music". Does that make New Order freestyle? Of course not. But things crossed over, and I have no doubt some of those bands were at least partly influenced by freestyle music.
