I always thought Arrested Development’s 1994 album ‘Zingalamaduni’ was an all-time great. Now it’s an interesting listen.
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OPINION: Somehow 15-year-old me missed all of the pretense, self-righteousness, moral-messaging and preachiness of one of the Blackest albums ever created.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Do you have an album, movie or song (or anything, really) that you love(d) with your whole heart that others couldn’t care less about? You know, one of those pieces of music where you believe if people just gave it a chance they’d hear and feel exactly what you do? For me, that was Arrested Development’s second studio album, “Zingalamaduni,” released on June 14, 1994.
I was all in on Arrested Development. I still listen to “Tennessee” and feel emotional when Dionne Farris starts singing at the end. The “People Everyday” remix is still a club banger in the right setting. I might not have been the first person in line to buy “Zingalamaduni” when it was released, but I wasn’t far behind. My musical tastes back then were all over the place. I loved NWA as much as I loved De La Soul. I was 15 and learning to discern my actual tastes from things I liked. Be that as it may, “Zingalamaduni” seemed to check off every box my musical soul needed. I loved the production, I loved the lyrics (le sigh), and I loved the message because I, too, believed we had to all fight the good fight and we needed to stop littering (more le sigh).
The first single from the album was “Ease My Mind” and despite everything I might say after this sentence, that song is beautiful. For years, I would tell anybody who would listen that they needed to listen to “Zingalamaduni.” I subjected unsuspecting passengers in my car to the stylistic condescension of Speech, except back then, I didn’t realize that’s what was happening. I just thought he was spitting knowledge and facts. Here’s the thing, I’ve always been a person who could be swayed by amazing music. Musically, “Zingalamaduni” is a banger, even if it’s not for everybody. And boy did the people say it wasn’t for them; I genuinely don’t know a soul who bought this album aside from me. Not-a-one. Which is crazy — Arrested Development’s debut album “3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of…” was an album everybody knew. “Tennessee” was a smash that hit the top of the pop charts and propelled the group into super-stardom. In 1993, Arrested Development won two Grammys: one for Best New Artist and one for “Tennessee” as Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. With that kind of buildup, you’d think their second album would fly off shelves.
And yet.
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It took me a while to understand why that didn’t happen. Obviously, in 1993, Death Row Records came in and crushed the buildings on everything and everybody. At that same time, Bad Boy Records was bubbling and the Wu Tang Clan was entirely changing the sound of hip-hop. It’s entirely possible that Arrested Development just got lost in the sauce of several behemoth musical movements. But also, the moral messaging and content could have easily turned off a large swath of people. What seemed revolutionary in 1992 felt like being preached at and scolded in 1994. Even listening to this album in 2024, I am astounded at just how much self-righteousness is dripping from the entire project.
At this point, I still find it remarkable, but even I’m entirely turned off from the messaging that’s littered throughout and the paternalism that drives the entire project, though I have no doubt he believes everything he was saying. Speech is 100% telling the community how to live their lives to gain his belief in freedom, which does sound community-oriented. However, I can’t imagine most people want to listen to albums worth of that, especially because though Speech is supremely talented as a producer, the lyrics come across as super simple. While simplicity isn’t a crime, it might explain why people got off that train. The 1994 me, though, could not get enough of this album. Even by the time I got to college in 1997, I expected all of the enlightened people around me to be up on this album. I was wrong. Nobody had it, and when I shared it people told me to turn it off and that made me sad.
As I truly listen to it in the year of our lord 2024, I get it. For years it was one of my favorite albums but it’s a very different listen with age, experience and context. I guess I just needed some time … to ease my mind. I’ll see myself out.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).
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