Joi’s Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome

Before receiving the advance of Joi Gilliam’s brilliant, but cancelled sophomore album Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome in 1996, I’d never heard of black rocker Betty Davis. “She never had a hit record, so a lot of people don’t know who she is,” explains Joi, who is currently on the road with D’Angelo and the Vanguard. “In her music, you can hear the passion and artistry as well as the complexity and discipline. But, most of all, there is also a sense of freedom.”

20 years ago, as Joi was mentally collecting ideas for her second album, that sense of musical freedom began swirling through her mind as well. “Prior to hearing her, the only people I felt kindred to in that way was Minnie Riperton, LaBelle and Sade, but Betty Davis was the missing link. Listening to her voice, I felt as though I’d been adopted, but now I had found my natural soul mama.”

Joi Ellen Gilliam was discovered in her native Nashville by producer/songwriter Dallas Austin in 1992. In Tennessee, her mother, Beverly, worked for the sheriff’s department and her father, Joe, was a former superstar NFL quarterback who eventually fell victim to drug addiction. Her parents divorced when she was seven or eight, but until the day he died in 2006, she was daddy’s little girl. “I used to ride with him in the car listening to Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters album,” Joi remembers, “but it was my mother who took me to a P-Funk concert when I was six; I guess she couldn’t find a babysitter.”

Austin was introduced to Joi by a studio engineer in her hometown. At the time, she had short dyed blonde hair. “I come from a family of sharp ladies,” Joi says. “So, even when I’m ratchet, I try to be elegant. My mom and grandmom taught me to be fashionably competent.” Back in the ’90s, Joi’s style varied from thrift-store chic to boho b-girl to leather pants-wielding rocker chick. Joi was hanging out at local studios, just messing around with music.

Dallas, who was in town working on his own ill-fated R&B/funk group Highland Place Mobsters, was impressed by Joi’s demo, but soon returned to Atlanta to finish working on the then-upcoming TLC album Ooooooohhh... On the TLC Tip. A few months later, Joi moved to Atlanta, where the fledging hip-hop/R&B scene, mostly centered around LaFace and So So Def was about to explode. When Dallas got wind that she was in town, he invited her to his studio. The young producer played her tracks he’d been working on. What she heard sounded nothing like the young producer had done before.

Discovered by Klymaxx member Joyce “Fenderella” Irby, Austin started his career at 14. A few years later, he was a proven hit maker with the post new-jack swing sound heard on ABC’s “Iesha” and Boyz II Men “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday.” Austin was a lifelong Prince fan, though, who was also into the electro moan of Depeche Mode’s Violator and the Brit-beat of Massive Attack’s Blue Lines. He was itching to do something different.

One of the songs Dallas and Joi worked on that night was “Sunshine and the Rain.” The ambient angst of the music blended perfectly with Joi’s hot ice voice. “I’m feelin’ that pressure, now now / I’m feelin’ that same round and round / I can’t go forward,” Joi droned in a ghetto Goth style. “It was clear from the beginning that was a special song. That same night, we listened to the song about 50 times and, afterwards, Dallas asked if I wanted to be signed as an artist.” Producing the entire project as well as playing most of the instruments and co-writing the songs, Dallas’ obvious excitement was mixed into the grooves. “I had a vision of a very creative girl, someone who would be a leader, who could write and improvise,” Austin told writer Carol Cooper in 1995. “Joi was the one I was [looking] for; creatively, Joi is like my soul mate.”

Joi was 22 when The Pendulum Vibe was released on EMI in 1994. It featured the sonically textured heartbreak of “Fatal Love Sick Journey,” the bisexual confessional “Nacissa Cutie Pie” and the haunting “Sunshine and the Rain.” Video director Josh Taft, who worked with Stone Temple Pilots and A Tribe Called Quest, directed an arty blue-tinted promotional clip that played with S&M imagery and went into regular rotation on BET and MTV.

“No one else in black music was making videos like that, so it got the attention of people who were on the cutting edge,” remembers Joi. “Going to parties with Madonna, having dinner with Lenny Kravitz and appearing in ads for CK shot by Steven Meisel, it was cool.” Although Joi had made fans of other arty music freaks including D’Angelo and Tricky, The Pendulum Vibe didn’t move many copies. The album came out around the same time as Mary J. Blige’s platinum-selling My Life, and it was obvious that EMI wanted a similar type of success.

Whereas another artist might’ve been willing to conform to the record company’s wishes, Joi was more concerned with defining herself as an artist, not just the latest R&B diva. “I didn’t want to do anything with drum tracks,” Joi said. “I wanted to do funky, groundbreaking stuff. I wanted a band.” Her ambitions weren’t welcomed by EMI. In the end, though, it didn’t matter. Stubborn co-conspirators Joi and Austin went extreme, and brought in post-punk ska punk mad hatters Fishbone to back Joi.

Fishbone lead singer Angelo Moore started out as a pop-lock dancer in California, but after catching a Dead Kennedy’s show as a teenager, he became a rocker. “Fuck American stereotypes when it comes to doing something you love,” Moore exclaims. “Fishbone wasn’t thinking about the politics of being a black rock band, we just did what we liked.”

Joi first saw their crazed act on Soul Train when she was 17. They were performing a brain damaged version of Curtis Mayfield’s classic “Freddie’s Dead.” “Over the years, so many people have told me, ‘You made me feel like it was all right to be black and be a rocker,’” says Moore. “We didn’t even know the effect we were having on people.”

Relocating to Atlanta, the wild West Coast group fit in perfectly with the community of Southern oddballs. Dallas Austin produced their album Chim Chim’s Bad Ass Revenge while they worked with Joi on her own record, which came to be called Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome.

Amoeba opens with “Move On,” a song with a discoesque vibe that recalls “Ring My Bell” before literally moving on and morphing into a big beat where jungle boogie meets stadium rock. Throughout the album, Joi tried on a variety of vocal/musical personas while staying forever true to herself; from the sex-drenched lyricism of “If I’m Lucky I Just Might Get Picked Up” to the doomed romance and screaming guitars on “It’s Over,” a straight-up blues joint.

“A lot of friends would stop by, hang-out and play on tracks. Speech from Arrested Development vibed with us on ‘I Believe.’” In addition, producers Organized Noize contributed their blunted style to “Dandelion Dust,” a black velvet psychedelic track. “I had done background vocals for Outkast and Goodie Mob, as well as tour dates.”

While The Pendulum Vibe was atmospheric, Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome was kick-ass and the suits at EMI weren’t pleased. The label told her they didn’t hear any radio singles, pooh-poohing her experimentation, which sounded nothing like then current hit-makers Changing Faces or SWV.

Although advances of Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome were shipped out to critics and tastemakers, EMI decided to hold the record until Joi delivered some real urban music without all those screeching guitars. “Vocally, I believe in taking risks,” Joi said. “I think of myself as a vessel that the music moves through. The expression that I release as a result of the music, I like to think that’s the most free, uncut, unfiltered experience that I can offer someone.”

After EMI put the hammer down, Joi took a break from the business and started dating Big Gippp from Goodie Mob. The two were married in 1995. Joi got pregnant, and a baby girl, Keypsiia, was born in June. The happiness was short-lived, however, as Joi was struck with a postpartum depression that lasted for ten weeks. “I would have these ugly anxiety attacks,” she remembers. “I was scary, crying all the time, walking around like a zombie. It was so bad I didn’t think it would ever get better. I thought I was going to die. I thought I had made a terrible mistake. I thought I was crazy; the world felt like hell.” With the love of Gippp and her mother by her side, Joi made it through the fire and began planning to go on the road with Fishbone, Goodie Mob and De La Soul. “I really started feeling better when I was planning that tour.”

After playing the 30 cities, Joi finally went back to the studio. Deciding to record another cover, she pulled out the LaBelle album Nightbirds and selected the yearning song “You Turn Me On.” Also included in her package to the label were three fresh tracks, including the (finally) radio friendly track “Ghetto Superstar.”

As luck would have it, shortly after EMI Records approved Joi’s new material, the label merged with Virgin Records and closed its doors. In 1997, after Dallas Austin brought back Joi’s masters from Virgin Records, he partnered with former Zoo Records executive Kevin Czinger and launched Freeworld Entertainment. New advance albums of Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome were shipped to music writers. Within months, though, Freeworld folded as well.

While the news was devastating for Joi, the self-proclaimed “Tennessee Slim” didn’t return home. She opted to stay in her adopted city to raise her daughter and continue her career. Along the way, there has been more solo albums, more disappointments (she and Gipp divorced in 2003) and countless blessings as she continued to tour and sing backup for Raphael Saadiq, Kelis and Pink.

Last year, she toured with the recently reunited Outkast. On the road with her “little brothers,” she also performed a few “20 Years of Joi” shows, commemorating the release of The Pendulum Vibe in various cities including Atlanta. Back in the city where it all began, Joi was dressed in a sparkly bodysuit and angel wings. “It was a full house. There were people in the audience who were there when I played my first show at the Veldt in 1993. It was really special.”

Now it’s more than two decades after the initial sessions of Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome. Copies go for $60 on eBay, academics are delivering papers on its importance and old school fans still talk about her sophomore album that should’ve set the world aflame. “People are quick to say that I’m underappreciated or underrated, but I reject that idea,” says Joi. “I am appreciated by the people that do and I’m still fucking here more than 20 years later.”