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When the first moments of the first song of your first album are as crisp and chilling as the "Aaaaaa-yah!" and fat chords that open "Cissy Strut", hyperbole tends to abound. New Orleans demi-gods and house band for Allen freakin' Toussaint before they were out of their infancy, the Meters were the peak of precise, slashing through each other's instruments and whipping up funk like it was chicken salad-- thoroughly, deliciously, and fast.
Art Neville ran shit from on high behind that keyboard, but the interplay between guitarist Leo Nocentelli and drummer Zigaboo Modeliste is near impossible to compute. Which explains why the track has been flipped more than 20 times on hip-hop records ranging from Onyx's "Bacdafucup" to Raheem's "5th Ward". There are few songs that pop with the kind of instrumental arrogance "Cissy Strut" carries. In doing so, and basically laying the concrete for funk music, they set the standard for talking loud and saying nothing. In a good way. --Sean Fennessey |
