When the musician Crystal Waters sits down in a recording studio to work on a new song, she almost always begins by setting the melody, then adds her lyrics on top. In the case of “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless),” Waters’s breakthrough 1991 hit about a stylish, out-of-work lady living on the streets of Washington, D.C., where Waters lived at the time, she translated the beat itself into words. Her hypnotic articulation around the keyboard bass line — “La da dee, la da da,” she sings repeatedly on the refrain — is the backbone of the song, which has been sampled by dozens of other artists, including Katy Perry, Alicia Keys and Trey Songz. A classic of the house subgenre of dance music, which rose out of underground nightlife in Chicago and, later, New York in the 1970s and ’80s, “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)” and its addictive hook can still be heard playing in clubs and on the radio over 30 years after its release.
Given her close attention to rhythm in her work, it isn’t surprising that, when asked to name one of her most-loved pieces of music for T’s “My Favorite Song” series, Waters selected another track with creative vocals that help keep time, “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” (1982) by Michael Jackson. Around five minutes into the number comes a chant that Jackson adapted from the Cameroonian artist Manu Dibango’s 1972 Afro-funk song “Soul Makossa”: “Ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa.” Though it bears little meaning in this context, the phrase has its own flow and makes for a distinctive finale to the song. “Whenever I hear it, I get chill bumps,” Waters says. Now 63, Waters grew up listening to the Jackson 5 and admires singer-songwriters like Jackson as well as Prince, Gil Scott-Heron and Billie Eilish for the personal flourishes they bring to their projects. But she gives special praise to the composer Quincy Jones for his input on “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” His layering of trumpets, synthesizers and background vocals with Jackson’s own virtuosic singing reminds Waters of her own way of forming something cohesive out of many different parts. “It’s all these rhythms that are just placed on top of each other,” she says.
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