Rocktrospectiva: The Wider Art Rock "Time's Up" Turns 35

Released on 28 August 1990 "Time's Up" was the second studio album by US rock band Living Colour, through Epic Records. It was the follow-up to their successful 1988 album Vivid. Time's Up features a wide range of genres and also includes cameo appearances by Queen Latifah, Little Richard, Doug E. Fresh, Maceo Parker and James Earl Jones. The album reached gold status, peaking at #13 on the Billboard 200 and spawned three singles "Time's Up", "Love Rears Its Ugly Face", "Type" & "Elvis Is Dead". 

Time's Up was an interesting album, according to Corey Glover cause the band spent part of the time making Time's Up in California - we were in LA. We did some of the basic tracks in LA. And that was really weird, because we're New York guys. Hanging out in California and being very 'California' was very strange to us. We were staying in the Valley, and it felt like we were in school, because we had to get up in the morning and I met Will at what felt like the bus stop. It was like, 'OK, we've got to go to work.' And jogging around in California and hanging around in California - and hanging out with the Fishbone guys while we were out there. 

Time's Up has been described as a hard rock, heavy metal, funk metal, and art rock album, with elements of hip hop, jazz, funk, jazz fusion, Delta blues, soul, and punk rock. Reid's guitar work throughout explores "crunchy riffs, white noise and atonality." Musical allusions to Public Enemy and Paul Simon appear on the record. Early subjects on the album concern personal and social problems, including drug dealing "New Jack Theme", environmental catastrophe ("Time's Up") and racism "Pride", whereas "Elvis Is Dead" calls into doubt Elvis Presley's reputation as 'the king of rock'.

The album opened with "Time's Up", a hardcore song, before moving to the Afrocentric-tinged "History Lesson", which uses cut-up samples to demonstrate African music being "for communication purposes". "Type" has been described as an unusual choice of lead single, due to its sophisticated, six-and-a-half minute length. "Pride" is reminiscent of Led Zeppelin a jazz-rock song, "Elvis Is Dead" features a guest rap from Little Richard and a saxophone solo from Maceo Parker. "Type" and "Information Overload" feature complicated rhythms, while "Love Rears Its Ugly Head" is a funky, romantic song featuring a wah-wah guitar solo. "Under Cover of Darkness", featuring rapper Queen Latifah, was written on the subject of unprotected sex and features a pure jazz guitar solo from Reid. "Solace of You", a West African-style highlife love song featuring a reggae beat, is a diversion from the album's heavier topics, and musically reveals the group's African roots.

Critics were significantly positive called one of the best art rock album ever, praising Reid's corrosive guitar work, by saying he: often leapfrogs into rhythmic hyperspace, sliding around the outline of a beat that for moments on end no one explicitly plays. Such complicated musical thinking is common in jazz but almost unknown in rock. Living Colour widens rock’s scope, introducing, in an album aimed at a wide audience, a tough- minded kind of music-making normally found only in far more intellectual art.

 

Time's Up Track List: 

 

1. Time's Up

2. History Lesson

3. Pride

4. Love Rears Its Ugly Head

5. New Jack Theme

6. Someone Like You

7. Elvis Is Dead

8. Type

9. Information Overload

10. Under Cover Of Darkness

11. Ology

12. Fight The Fight

13. Tag Team Partners

14. Solace Of You

15. This Is The Life

16. Final Solution (Live In Chicago 1990) bonus track