Warrior princess
Neo-soulstress Joi is back — and she’s still fighting the good fight
Joi is looking especially low-key as she breezes into Midtown’s trendy Cavu restaurant and bar, home of her favorite sea bass dish. For starters, most of her is covered by an ankle-length vintage dress and her face is makeup free. But in traditional Joi fashion, she greets those she knows with a warm hug and a smile that’s genuine. Then it’s time to get down to business.
“I need a drink,” she says.
It’s understandable that Joi would need a little something to take the edge off. It’s been a long day — one that began, as it does most every weekday morning, with getting her daughter ready for school. The next several hours were spent doing press and radio interviews.
As the bartender mixes Joi a Maitai, the two talk about their favorite movies. Then he asks her what she does.
Frankly, it’s amazing the whole world doesn’t know what Joi Gilliam Gipp does. An R&B singer who can, first and foremost, really sing, Joi also writes her own tunes and has crafted a persona so raw, the best in the business borrow from it. (Case in point: Joi took to the stage with a star on her breast long before Lil’ Kim.)
With her major-label debut, 1994’s Pendulum Vibe, Joi became one of the pioneers of the neo-soul movement. Garnering critical acclaim, the album was praised by the artist’s peers but sold a rather modest 100,000 copies. No problem. Joi was back in 1996 with Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome, which firmly established her as a genre-defying bad-ass who could rock Hendrix-hard and croon Roberta Flack-soft. Her live shows almost always sold out, intensifying the hype. But in the end, Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome didn’t have a chance. It’s label, EMI, folded and the album vanished from the shelves.
So for the next couple years, Joi retreated into her private life, focusing on her husband, Cameron Gipp, of Atlanta rappers Goodie Mob, and their daughter, Keypsiia Blue Daydreamer.
“Trying to perfect motherhood and being a good wife was really important to me because I knew that regardless of what happens, my home life had to be trump tight,” Joi says. “Because, if not, Gipp wouldn’t be successful, I wouldn’t be successful, and neither one of us would have shit.”
Then, last year, Joi received an unexpected phone call: Raphael Saadiq asked her to join his group, Lucy Pearl, as a replacement for Dawn Robinson. But after a few shows, Lucy Pearl went on hiatus.
That brings us to the present. Only days remain before the release of Joi’s new album, the aptly titled Star Kitty’s Revenge.
“I’m optimistic,” she says. “I have a better understanding of what it’s going to take on my part. I’m learning that it’s not enough just to be talented or just to be dope in this business. There’s so much I had to learn about how the game really goes. Stuff I really didn’t have to know before.”
Now the need to know is a necessity.
“I’m the executive producer on the project,” Joi continues. “I’m the one who coordinated everything — who had to work with that little-bitty-ass budget to make it stretch. I’m the one who had to rearrange things, because I’m used to working with all live instruments. And I had to adjust my mind to the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to do this whole thing live. I had to use tracks — just a whole bunch of stuff. How am I going to be a good mother and a good wife? How am I going to see about myself? Stay motivated? Be creative? This time around is so much different, but I’m up for it. I’m up for the challenge.”
Challenge is something Joi knows all too well — even now, when things seem to be running so smoothly. She’s getting coverage in all the right magazines; a little radio here, a little television there. Then there’s her live performances, two in Atlanta in the last couple months. But things aren’t rolling along so well with her new label, Universal Records. The relationship has been bumpy.
“I think they signed me off of legend,” she explains. “I don’t think they really knew me as an artist. A couple of people at the label did — but, in general, the label didn’t. I think once they got the project they were like, ‘Well this isn’t really fucking marketable now is it? What the hell are we going to do with this shit?’”
Star Kitty’s Revenge was scheduled for release last summer. Then it was pushed to fall, then to January of this year. Now, a full year after the first listening party last March, it’s finally hitting stores.
“Universal had a lot of ideas of what they thought I was and that was constantly in conflict, and still is, with what I am — down to my album packaging. Please make sure you write this: I hate that muthafuckin’ album cover. I did not pick that muthafucka, but I had to approve it. I was told if we sell 200,000 copies, we’ll change it. I literally shed tears about that. I can’t stand to be misrepresented when I work hard as hell to represent correctly. And some of the artwork on the album ...” Joi sticks her finger in her mouth and gags. “I hate it so much.”
But Joi also knows you have to choose your battles. “I had to use wisdom,” she says. “I was like, ‘I could have the album cover I want and if they don’t push it, and then what?’ We have a real pulling-teeth-type of relationship, but that’s where I am. And I am going to damn well make the best of it while I’m here.”
Joi’s testimony may be harsh. But it’s real and it’s honest — just like her music. She has a way of using words to slice right through the bullshit to get to the truth. It’s a pattern she established back with Pendulum Vibe’s “Sunshine and the Rain,” her exploration of life and survival set to a hypnotic bass groove, and “Freedom,” which was selected as the soundtrack of Mario Van Peebles film the Panther.
Star Kitty’s Revenge continues that “honesty at all costs” tradition with a new batch of intelligent, introspective songs that re-establish Joi as an anomaly able to morph into a singer well versed in R&B, rock, funk, classical, folk or whatever.
And the funny thing is, Joi has never had a single vocal lesson. But with it’s with ease that she dons her R&B hat for the album’s first single, “Missing You.” Smooth and jazzy, peppered with funky overtones, the track is produced by longtime friend and collaborator Dallas Austin, who has worked with TLC, Boyz II Men and others. Its bold lyrics are drenched in passionate pleas for a lover’s return. At a time when female expression in R&B is so focused on independence, emotional indifference and (often) contempt for the opposite sex, Joi’s vulnerable perspective is refreshing. It reminds women that it’s OK to want someone back, that love isn’t a sign of weakness.
But Joi fans needn’t worry. She hasn’t completely crossed over to (presumably) more marketable R&B. She rocks out and rocks hard on the re-make of Chaka Khan’s “I’m a Woman.” True to form, she gets downright nasty in “Crave,” cooing over a techno-inspired rhythm, “When you lick yo’ lips, grab yo’ dick, goddamn I love that shit ... nigga. I got this craving for you and all the things that you do. I got this funky, funky crave.” And on “Jefferson St. Joe,” Joi shows her tender side with a touching tribute to her father, Joe Gilliam, the first African-American quarterback in the NFL.
Star Kitty’s Revenge is, by far, Joi’s most diverse work yet, a musically well-balanced effort indicative of her growth as a writer and a singer — growth she attributes to her family.
“It’s really made me just more brutally honest. I kick ass and take names at this point,” she says. “I wasn’t like that before. I guess it’s because I’m more ready to examine my faults and because I’m honest with myself. I’m like that with other people. I think that’s a quality I’ve developed that has probably pissed a few people off, but honestly I don’t fucking care. The truth is the truth.”
And truth is what Star Kitty’s Revenge is all about.
“I feel like, after all of these years, I am finally getting to have my say on a mass-appeal level,” Joi says. “And I’m determined as hell to find place for the kind of music I do.”