In the late '60s, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil invited Tom Zé to join the Tropicálistas and light a fire under Brazil’s military dictatorship. True to form, he manages to retain a sliver of his egomania even in his darkest hour, claiming his "Egyptian voice will hypnotize." After three decades of being entranced by he of the magnificent bouffant, maybe it's time we concede the point. -Renato Pagnani With "I Cry (Night After Night)", Egyptian Lover not only paved the way for the sad robot music that the likes of Kanye West and Future would go on to push farther and into weirder territory, he also helped establish a trope that rappers still employ to this day: the sad-sack confessional that humanizes their bulletproof tough-guy persona, or in Lover's case, his gift-to-womankind lothario status.
Absent is the Egyptian iconography that situated the Californian DJ/producer/rapper/electro pioneer's early-'80s output squarely in the realm of Afrofuturism while also giving it the faintest whiff of novelty in its place is the musical equivalent of crying into your pillow after eating a pint of Ben & Jerry's. "I Cry (Night After Night)" might not be Egyptian Lover's most famous anthem (that would be "Egypt Egypt"), but it remains one of Greg Broussard's most influential.
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