I recently learned that Nu Shooz, creators of the eternal Black cookout jam ‘I Can’t Wait,’ are a white duo from Oregon
OPINION: The fact that I’m still finding out that white groups made songs from my youth that are Black community classics blows my mind.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
One of my favorite songs to listen to at pretty much any function where Black people will gather is Nu Shooz’s “I Can’t Wait.” I’m 45 and this song has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I have heard it at family reunions, cookouts, graduation parties, etc. I guess because I’ve only heard the song at Black functions (and for a time, at all Black functions), I assumed its creators were Black people — probably from Detroit.
So you can imagine my surprise when I learned, maybe last year, that Nu Shooz is a white husband-and-wife duo from Portland, Oregon. They join a list of white groups (this might need an asterisk) that made music so omnipresent in the Black community that many of us didn’t realize or never checked to see if they were, indeed, Black. If that group of artists had a president, it would be Bobby Caldwell. There are still people finding out that he is white, and it tickles me every time. To be clear, the race of the artists doesn’t matter; finding out Nu Shooz are white people doesn’t change my relationship with the song or with them. I love “I Can’t Wait” and will play it whenever the moment calls for it or when the mood suits. It’s just funny.
What’s even funnier is that there is a music video for “I Can’t Wait,” but because it was released in 1986 — before I knew that songs aside from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” had music videos and well before I had any earthly idea where to watch them — I’d never seen it until I was in my 40s. A song that I grew up with and has been in my life for roughly 40 years has a music video, and because I rarely, if ever, go back and check out music videos from the 1980s, I had no idea.
That’s how I made this discovery. I was listening to “I Can’t Wait” and realized I didn’t know anything about the group. I didn’t know if they were a band. I didn’t know where they were from and also realized that I couldn’t name another song from them if my life depended on it. I googled the group and landed on their Wiki page, which does not have a picture of them but, of course, has their names (John Smith and Valerie Day) and their point of origin: Portland, Oregon.
PORTLAND, OREGON??????!!
I don’t know much about Portland but I definitely don’t think about Black people or Black musicians (Hi, Esperanza Spalding!) when I hear Portland. So then I went to YouTube to see if there were any videos of them and BOOM — a whole video for “I Can’t Wait” with a white woman singing all the parts I assumed were sung by a Black woman. Now, I’m not saying Valerie Day sounds like Teena Marie, but I’d really never thought, or considered, that she was white because the song was always played at Black functions, and usually songs made by Black folks are played at Black functions.
Of course, as soon as I found this knowledge, I had to ask my friends if they knew and shockingly, yes, most of my friends did. There were a few folks who, like me, who had never thought about it, and because they heard it in similar places as me, made the same assumption I did. But way more people than I realized had also seen the video and here I was at 40-plus seeing the video for the first time. Because of my musical knowledge and enthusiasm, several of the homies got quite a chuckle out of my discovery.
So yeah, at my big age, I learned something that many people already knew. I can’t wait until the next time it happens. I know you see what I did there. I’ll see myself out.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).
