#Mint condition definition albums professional
Perhaps it’s appropriate that, in lieu of platinum platters filling their walls, the group has become the gold standard for professional r&b ensembles, reaping the profound and lasting respect of their musical peers. Although Mint Condition has enjoyed a handful of middling pop hits and r&b chart successes, any notion of superstardom is a bygone pipedream. “We sample ourselves,” laughed guitarist Homer O’Dell, referring to the way they’d use outtakes from discarded original songs to adorn the mix.įlash forward 15 years. But they did proudly emphasize that, at a time when studio sampling and other technical gimmickry was all the rage, they were a self-contained band that made their own music, and could play anything from Latin to jazz to classical to soul. Seemingly on the cusp of major stardom, the members of Mint didn’t boast about their commercial clout, or otherwise front with the swagger that was de rigueur for the times. Paul Central, and had seen years of local gigs pay off in the smash success of their 1991 debut album, “Meant to Be Mint.” One of the singles from the record, the ballad, “Breakin’ My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes),” soared up the pop charts, nestling just beneath Michael Jackson and Prince among r&b acts. Although in their mid-20s, they’d been together since high school at St. Fresh off a promotional tour for their just-released second CD on Flyte Tymes Perspective Records label, they sported all the “fly gear” and period fashion of the early ’90s, but seemed preternaturally down-to-earth in conversation. I first met the group more than 15 years ago, out by the loading dock near the game room in the Flyte Tyme Studios run by Jimmy Jam Harris and Terry Lewis in Edina. Rather than slap a cliché on a band that deserves more in-depth appreciation, let me just say that I can’t think of a musical group that embodies that three-pronged definition more successfully than the St. Once upon a time it stood for integrity: For describing life’s conditions the way you saw them, for staying loyal to the “‘hoods” in which you were raised, and for resisting creatively crippling commercial compromises to follow your muse. “Keeping it real” is probably the most hackneyed catch-phrase in the argot of contemporary black music.
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