page_title: Lotti Golden
section_title: 1980–85: Electro/hip hop
hierarchical_section_title: Lotti Golden / Writer/producer / 1980–85: Electro/hip hop
caption_attribution_description: English: Author: Anita Golden
context_page_description: Lotti Golden is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, poet and artist. Golden is best known for her 1969 debut album, Motor-Cycle on Atlantic Records.
  Winner of the ASCAP Pop Award for songwriting and RIAA certified Gold and Platinum awards as a writer/producer, Golden has written and produced Top 5 hits in the US and abroad. Credited for her innovative work in early electro and Hip hop music, Golden is featured in the Rap Attack 3: African Rap To Global Hip Hop by David Toop, and Signed, Sealed, and Delivered: True Life Stories of Women of Pop for her pioneering work as a female record producer.
context_section_description: In the early 1980s Lotti Golden transitioned from artist to writer/producer. Golden's 1982 international dance hit "I Specialize in Love" co-written with musician Richard Scher, enabled her to move into record production: "The success gave [Golden] the freedom to demand production rights to her songs." In an interview for the anthology, Signed, Sealed and Delivered-True Life Stories of Women in Pop, Golden stated that performing live was OK, but she preferred the recording studio, "that wonderful world of sound [where] anything was possible."
  As a writer/producer, Golden gained artistic control of her work, becoming a major progenitor of electro and early hip hop. UK music historian Kevin Pearce describes Golden's transition from artist to producer: "I can still remember the delight at reading [David] Toop's "Rap Attack" and realizing that the Lotti Golden involved as part of electro pioneers Warp 9 in the early 1980s was the same Lotti Golden recording for Atlantic in 1969… with Bob Crewe producing the fantastic Motor-Cycle, one of the greatest and criminally rarest records ever". 
  Golden, with co-writer/producer Scher, wrote and recorded under the moniker Warp 9, a studio production project at the forefront of the electro movement, to which they eventually added live personnel. Warp 9's electro classics Nunk (1982) and Light Years Away (1983), a tale of ancient astronaut visitation, characterize the sci-fi, afrofuturist aspect of electro. Described as "the perfect instance of hip hop's contemporary ramifications," Golden and Scher worked "real emotion and intelligence into the world of experimental hip-hop and electro." Their records are ranked among the most iconic of the electro hip hop era.
  Among the early production teams using the Roland TR-808 drum machine, Golden and Scher created a brand of "electo hip hop records with gorgeous textures and multiple layers." Newsweek's "Language Arts & Disciplines" highlighted Warp 9's experimental use of vocoders in Light Years Away. The Guardian (May 2014) characterized Light Years Away as "
  a cornerstone of early 80's beatbox afrofuturism, inspired by Grandmaster's Flash's The Message, a brilliantly spare and sparse piece of electro hip-hop traversing inner and outer space." DJ Greg Wilson, the first to embrace electro in the UK calculates the genre's influence on art and culture as "huge," ushering in the computer age, hip hop, and generating "a whole new approach to popular music."
  Warp 9's hits brought Golden to the attention of Island Record's chief Chris Blackwell, resulting in a worldwide publishing deal with Island Music. Golden (with Scher) went on to write for, produce and/or remix artists including Diana Ross' hit single "Dirty Looks" from her Red Hot Rhythm & Blues album and TV Special, Patti Austin, Jennifer Holliday (Say You Love Me), The Manhattans, Brenda K. Starr (I Want Your Love featuring guest rapper Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys), Nina Hagen and Jimmy Cliff.
  During the early 1980s Golden began a longstanding collaborative relationship with producer Arthur Baker, co-writing the Latin Freestyle music classic "Pickin' Up Pieces" by Brenda K Starr and co-producing Jennifer Holliday's Billboard Hot 100 hit, "Hard Times For Lovers" (Geffen). Golden contributed background vocals/arrangements for many of Baker's projects including the Goon Squad's "Eight Arms to Hold You," featured on The Goonies: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Golden worked with Baker on Artists United Against Apartheid, Sun City, and is among the sixty-one artists (including Lou Reed, Bono, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Keith Richards, Bob Dylan and Gil Scott Heron) who participated in what rock critic Dave Marsh describes as "the most diverse line up of popular musicians ever assembled for a single session." Golden appears in the video.
caption: Lotti Golden, Riverside Park, NYC, 1981
exif: {}