Suicide celebrate the gift of life, not the end of it. For thirty years, Alan Vega and Martin Rev have played the urban-holocaust blues from deep inside the darkness, with nothing more than Vega's cornered-dog incantations and Rev's gothic-junkyard keys. American Supreme is Suicide's fifth studio album, and it comes at a perfectly apocalyptic time. Rev's synth arsenal has grown more colorful since the primal hum of 1977's Suicide, but Vega snarls and prays in "Swearin' to the Flag" and "American Mean" like he's fighting for breath in all that echo. And the duo's great gift for lullaby shines like a chrome heart in "Child, It's a New World." In a world going black, Suicide bring the light.

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"