Listen: Naked Eye / Luscious Jackson
Naked

Luscious Jackson never did manage to spin their wheels beyond the college market for very long.

Oh yes, the good old college market as it was once known. You don’t hear that tag being sold much these days, which clearly coincides with college radio’s withered presence. The format was always an interesting free for all when it came to musical selection, but the consistent requirement to allow untrained students airtime meant ultimately, those amateur deliveries put most listeners off. Only the die hards could withstand the dead air and weak back sells in exchange for hearing something different.

‘Naked Eye’ became Luscious Jackson’s temporary out of jail free card, gaining enough play to reach #36 on BILLBOARD’s Top 100. Despite name producers and an old school record label, their homemade, amateur sound was never lost. In fact, as with ‘Naked Eye’, they didn’t really sounded like a group were playing together at all. Despite their attempts at rap coming closer to a suburban high school band than some street toughs from New York’s Lower East Side, their squeaky clean middle class take on Prince basically boiled down to reheated Waitresses, but it kinda worked, and I always found myself fond of their singles.