Tropical Gangsters
| Tropical Gangsters | ||||
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| Studio album by Kid Creole and the Coconuts | ||||
| Released | May 10, 1982 | |||
| Recorded | 1981–1982 | |||
| Venue | Blank Tapes and Electric Lady Studios, New York City | |||
| Genre | Latin, funk, tropical | |||
| Length | 40:29 (original album) 72:28 (with bonus tracks) |
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| Label |
ZE Records/Island (UK & Europe) ZE Records/Sire Records (US & Canada) |
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| Producer | August Darnell | |||
| Kid Creole and the Coconuts chronology | ||||
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| Alternative cover | ||||
US & Canada album cover
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| Singles from Tropical Gangsters | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |    |
| Melody Maker | favorable |
| NME | average |
| Q |
(2002 reissue) |
| Robert Christgau | A |
Tropical Gangsters is the third album by Kid Creole and the Coconuts, released on May 10, 1982. Originally conceived as a solo album by band leader August Darnell and titled Wise Guy, his label ZE Records pressured him to change it to a Kid Creole and the Coconuts record and to make it more commercial sounding in order to relieve the label's financial problems. Despite the tensions this caused within the band and Darnell's complaint that the subsequent record was a "cop-out", the more dance-pop oriented sound helped it reached #145 in the Billboard 200 album chart, representing the group's commercial breakthrough in their home country (the album kept the title of Wise Guy in the US and Canada, with a different cover). However, to the surprise of Darnell and his record company Tropical Gangsters was a huge success in Australia and New Zealand, Europe, and in particular the UK, where the album peaked at #3 in the UK albums chart and yielded three top ten singles.Tropical Gangsters made Darnell a worldwide star, and the album remains both his and the ZE label's most successful record by far.
Following promotional work for the second Kid Creole and the Coconuts album Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places, Darnell gave an interview to the UK music magazine Melody Maker in December 1981 in which he spoke enthusiastically of the forthcoming solo album he was planning called Wise Guy, and told the magazine about three songs he already had written for the record titled "I'm a Wonderful Thing", "Stool Pigeon" (originally titled "Jive Talking") and "Imitation". When it became apparent a few months later, however, that the record would no longer be a solo album and that it would be significantly different in style musically from the previous records, Darnell told interviewers at the time that it was "a chance to do some other things", but in reality he felt he was being forced to do "a cop-out album, an R&B album" in order to ease ZE's considerable financial difficulties with their parent label in the US, Sire Records. By the time of the album's release in May 1982, Darnell acknowledged that his record company had put pressure on him and that the record had not turned out how he had wanted: "Make no mistake about it, this album is a compromise. It's much more steeped in R&B than Kid Creole should be. That's why it originally was supposed to be an August Darnell solo album. But because of the problems we ran into in the [record] company, and the company not believing in Kid Creole enough, this had to be turned into a Kid Creole album."
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Wikipedia