Jump Street

Don't by this album. Songs are not good and seemed rush which could explain why it do well on the charts. Recommendations: buy Car Wash soundtrack and Rose Royce ll.

Most won't see the value in this particular album but there are some nice cuts on this album.My favorite is Famous Last Words which is the reason I purchased it.

Great

Excellent condition

Another wonderful sleeper album from Rose Royce in the early 80's. And one of the reasons it's such a good album is because it learns from the mistakes of the previous album  Golden Touch . Once again the band are able to deliver a complete album package without sacrificing either one of the styles,funk and cinematic balladry that they'd popularized. Among all the groups Norman Whitfield produced on and off of Motown,Rose Royce had proven the most successful self contained act and the most enduring. Things were still difficult around them with this release. The anti disco freeze out soldiered on and the still all important aspect of radio play still wasn't in the bands favor either. Basically,they were showing signs of being passed their prime. It was all similar to what happened with Chic,even though they were totally different types of bands. So they decided to do basically the same thing that a lot of funk bands in their situation were doing at the time: abandoning hopes of commercial appeal and making music to satisfy themselves and the loyal audience. Interestingly enough this album features the bands most cinematic and abstract takes on their music since  Strikes Again  four years earlier. The Jackson Pollock-like cover art doesn't exactly lie as to it's contents. It also seems the inspiration for their music had changed too. Always taking on a heavily arranged,almost operatic approach to their funk even after the cinematic soul/funk era came to an end this album is more stripped down,urban and in many ways focused on jazz. The title song opens the album on a surprisingly organic funk note with the horns taking presidents over the synthesizers. Same goes for the 11+ minute album centerpiece "R.R Express". And when the synthesizers do appear on these songs they are used in the most colorful,abstract sense-with rather warped melodic ideas. "Illusions" takes this to the next level with it's jazz-fusion style arrangement and Richee's scaling,almost vocalese style of delivery. The ballads here take on a totally different style than before-with "Famous Last Words" and "Tell Me That I'm Dreaming" taking on darker minor chords and eerie synth arrangements. "Please Return Your Love To Me" grafts the same approach to a more traditional Rose Royce ballad. This album concludes with "Fight It",one of the most unique type of songs that Rose Royce had done so far. Kind of a dark commentary on the plight of the early 80's culture,using the Iran hostage crisis as a metaphore it features a sung/spoken echoed style lead vocal and the electro-new wave/dub reggae hybrid somewhere in the Sly & Robbie vein. I'm not honestly sure how much the band and Whitfield's creative gambles really took off with fans and listeners at this point. In fact before this CD I only ever found this album on cassette tape at the very bottom of a huge pile,on sale at a pawn shop. Maybe that in a word was kind of it's fate for some time. As George Clinton once jested on the sleeve to his  Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends  album "You gotta choice:it's me or the bargain bin". Pretty much sums up where funk ended up in the early/mid 80's. But this music is NOT something that belongs under the rubbish pile. It's funk that was perhaps just a little too futurist for it's day-Rose Royce continuing to expand itself musically as it always had. This time however few people would notice. If only so many other acts even at that time had the strength to expand creatively despite hard times the way Rose Royce did. The future of funk might have been somewhat more secure as time passed.