Tashan - A Dream

Digitally remastered and expanded edition including four bonus tracks. The 1980s saw considerable changes in the way that R&B was produced. The types of instrumentation one typically associates with 1970s R&B the orchestral string arrangements of Philadelphia International Records, the punchy horn sections of Parliament/Funkadelic, the Bar-Kays, the Ohio Players and Tower of Power went out of fashion at urban radio stations, and urban contemporary (that is, post-1970s R&B) became a high-tech world of synthesizers, sequencers and drum machines. Even Cameo, who were the epitome of a horn-powered funk band in the late 1970s, downsized and adopted a much more electronic approach. Yet the more things change in music, the more they stay the same and in the 1980s, there were some R&B singers who combined the high-tech production techniques of urban contemporary and hip-hop with a passion for 1960s and 1970s soul. One such artist was Tashan, whose 1986 debut, Chasin a Dream, was arguably a precursor to the hip-hop soul that made Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, R. Kelly and D Angelo famous in the 1990s.