The Egyptian Lover

Greg Broussard, performing as Egyptian Lover, ranked among the era’s most inventive producers in old-school and electro. From his Los Angeles base he launched recording sessions in 1983 after absorbing Kraftwerk/hip-hop fusions such as Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” and Man Parrish’s “Hip-Hop Be Bop (Don’t Stop),” together with the extroverted loverman soul of Prince and Zapp. The following year he issued the breakdancing anthem “Egypt, Egypt” on Freak Beat. Like standout productions then emerging nationwide—from Cybotron in Detroit to Mantronix in New York—“Egypt, Egypt” and its successors “What Is a DJ If He Can't Scratch,” “And My Beat Goes Boom,” and “Computer Love (Sweet Dreams)” stayed in heavy rotation inside DJ crates throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Between the mid-1980s and the 1990s Broussard also delivered several LPs, most notably 1984’s On the Nile—effectively a greatest-hits set—1986’s One Track Mind, and 1994’s Back from the Tomb. He resurfaced in 2006 with Platinum Pyramids, maintained a live schedule that included shows with M.I.A., produced a track for Rye Rye, and finally released the long-gestating 1984 in 2015. The next year Stones Throw assembled 1983-1988, a definitive anthology of his early highlights that incorporated a pair of re-edits by label head Peanut Butter Wolf, who had sampled “What Is a DJ If He Can't Scratch” during his early-1990s work with MC Charizma.