Published: June 29, 1999
DAVE HOLLISTER
From
a pre-millennial musical landscape cluttered with pop pretenders and ersatz
R&B lovermen comes a singer whose songs of the street establish him
as a new urban griot. Indeed, Dave Hollister is a musical storyteller.
Also an accomplished producer, he has recorded and performed with the
likes of Patti LaBelle, Mary J. Blige, Tupac, Usher and perhaps most notably,
BLACKstreet. But Hollister's technical prowess, bold lyrical perspective
and emotional delivery have never been more in evidence than on Ghetto
Hymns (Def Squad/DreamWorks), his solo debut album.
Ghetto Hymns is the gritty soundtrack to the drama enacted every Saturday night in the noir wonderland of Any Ghetto, U.S.A. Embracing both the sacred and the profane, it is the aural backdrop to hustling and hurting, playing and praying, loving and losing. And it all slips from the lips of a seasoned participant in the scene.
"This album is about real situations and relationships," Hollister insists. "My inspiration for writing these songs was either my girl or something I've personally experienced." In fact, he wrote or co-wrote all but one of the disc's tracks, co-producing with Erick Sermon (EPMD, Def Squad), Stevie J, Noontime and BLACKstreet's Eric Williams (released May 25, 1999, Ghetto Hymns is the first fruit of a joint venture between Sermon's Def Squad production entity and DreamWorks Records). Redman collaborated on Hymns' intro, which establishes the disc's ghetto-fabulous mood.
Initial radio track "My Favorite Girl," Hollister reveals, "is about a guy who had a one-nighter with a female, but she wants more. Unfortunately, she can't have more because this man is already involved with a woman whom he has no intention of leaving. So the 'other woman' stalks him. I love this song because it's true to life - some of us have been through it."
"Came in the Door Pimpin'" (featuring rapper Too $hort) is a true player's cut - strictly for the fellas who are macking, not acting. "Pimpin"' and smooth-groove ballads like "Missing You" and "Can't Stay," along with the moving "Call on Me' and the scandalous "Babymamadrama," are just a few examples of Hollister's thematic breadth and documentarian's feel for authenticity.
The son of two preachers, he was born and raised on the rough West Side of Chicago, where he shared the family home with 11 siblings. "My family says I was two years old when I started singing commercials I heard on TV," says Hollister of his earliest musical proclivities. The youngster's budding talent was encouraged by his family (an extension of which included Hollister's cousins, K-Ci and JoJo Hailey). He received his vocal training amid the traditional gospel music of his father's church.
Still, Hollister was no angel. A self-described mischief-maker, he sang in the choir and played the organ only reluctantly. He confesses: "I grew up in the church, but I was a hoodrat. I got into plenty of trouble, and that really affects a person - it changed me a lot. Fortunately, I was able to reflect on my behavior, really think about the road I was going down. And I vowed I would never allow myself to be in those circumstances again."
With unflinching determination, Hollister resolved to rewrite his destiny. He returned to the church and dedicated himself to music. Before long, the teenager found himself working with award-winning gospel singer Vanessa Bell Armstrong: The world-renowned vocalist asked Hollister to tour with her and gospel legend Darryl Coley as a backup singer.
After three years on the road, the young man went to New York City to seek out his brother-in-law, R&B balladeer Glenn Jones. A series of missed connections, however, prevented him from locating Jones. With no lodging or money, Hollister turned to the street. He was "discovered" singing in Central Park by Sean "Puffy" Combs, who was then director of A&R at Uptown Records. After some convincing, Combs moved Hollister into his mother's home and landed him work with some of Uptown's artists.
Hollister did eventually hook up with Jones, who invited him on an international touring circuit (he also teamed with Jones on the latter's album Just As I Am). In Japan for a performance date, he made the acquaintance of Tupac Shakur, at the time a member of the Oakland rap outfit Digital Underground. Shakur asked Hollister to join him in Force One Network, an R&B spin-off of Digital Underground. The group managed to land a song on the soundtrack to John Singleton's "Boyz N the Hood," but Hollister nonetheless chose to leave Force One, preferring instead to sing backup for superstars Patti LaBelle and Mary J. Blige.
In yet another fateful encounter, Hollister met new jack swing king Teddy Riley during a performance at Virginia's Hampton Coliseum. Riley was so impressed by the up-and-coming singer's vocal skills and stage presence that he invited him to replace an original member of his group, BLACKstreet. Hollister enjoyed double-platinum success with the quartet's self-titled debut, which boasted the chart-topping singles "Joy," "Booti Call," "Baby Be Mine," "Tonight's the Night" and "Before I Let You Go" (co-written and co-produced by Hollister). Still, differences with the members of BLACKstreet over the music's direction resulted in his departure.
Hollister immediately became a much sought-after free agent. During the bidding war over his solo services, he met Erick Sermon, who was then launching a music production venture. Sermon eventually persuaded Hollister to sign with The Def Squad. Says Hollister of the union: "I think it's a good marriage of abilities. Erick and I had real musical chemistry from the start. His work has that down-and-dirty street vibe I was looking for. It was important for me to keep that edge."
The edge cuts deep as Hollister conjures a place where right and wrong coexist so closely that renaissance and decay are often seen flossing at the same bars. He paints a brutal vista populated by retired pimps searching endlessly for the fountain of youth and adolescent girls preparing to speak directly into Jesus' ear on Sunday morning about the transgressions of Saturday night. Children stare, wounded, through chain-link fences as the projects tower in the background.
But Hollister knows Any Ghetto is also a place where grandmothers stroll the sidewalks in their best hats, where brothers begin their days with lovely women watching over them and little boys follow their fathers to the local barber shop. His hip-hop-spiced inner-city serenades are expansive enough to reconcile this paradox of the beautiful and the beastly. Asked how his vision flows so freely from his soul to that of each listener, he says simply: "Emotion is the key to transporting people. When I sing a song, I become the character; I feel what that person is feeling. That's my biggest goal - to be the link between the person who lives in the song and the person who hears that life."
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