Sa-Fire review, 1989
You’ll notice I (skeptically) call her genre “Latin hip-hop,” not “Latin freestyle,” which designation I’m not sure I’d even heard yet in 1989. A few years earlier, I swear there was a Carol Cooper piece in the Village Voice that called it something like “nouveu huevos,” which I realize makes no sense whatsoever from either an egg or testicle perspective. So I might well be transposing a couple vowels or consonants in there. (Wait, stop the presses! Here’s Michael Freedberg writing about Trinere in the Boston Phoenix, January 1987: “Post-Shannon dance songs exaggerating every trick of New York’s huevo beat.” So I wasn’t far off! No idea how common that usage was though.) I also, in the very first sentence, vastly understate the dark side of, say, the Shangri-Las. Reviving this decades-old review to acknowledge Sa-Fire turning 60 today. She was born Wilma Cosmé, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 16 January 1966. Time flies, everybody.
BAM, 5 May 1989
I will give this a listen, because the Smoke City mention in your Vī Pink EP review turned me on to Nina Miranda's music which is consistently brilliant, then one thing led to another and I found Kelli Ali's 90s albums with Rick Nowels and some of Primal Scream - a very good haul!