Living Colour’s ‘Time’s Up’ was a reclamation of rock music’s Black roots

Living Colour had a massive rock hit with the song “Cult of Personality” and their debut album, Vivid, in the late ’80s. It made the American outfit a rare example of a Black hard rock band embraced by the mainstream.

When they came back with Time’s Up in 1990, they made sure people listening would understand that a Black rock band was not an anomaly.

” ‘Elvis is Dead’ is a wild song,” says World Cafe correspondent John Morrison. “It’s not only a diss song about Elvis. In a broader sense, it’s really about reclaiming rock music as Black music and as a product of Black American culture.”

In today’s session, Morrison talks about Living Colour’s Time’s Up 35 years on, what it said about the time, and why it still matters.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.