The enigmatic rework savant Belohnungszentrum—a name whispered in crate-digging circles like a secret handshake—stunned us with his five electrifying reimaginings on the celebrated Reworks 3. Each track was less a remix and more a resurrection, pulling buried rhythms into new, uncharted spaces. Now, he returns with a fresh and fearless deconstruction of Cameo’s 1987 groove-laden burner, “Back and Forth.”
What makes Belohnungszentrum’s work so striking is his restraint. He doesn’t overload, doesn’t drown the essence in excess. Instead, he distills. Here, the original’s neon-lit funk is stripped back to its skeleton—lean, unembellished, yet still pulsing with the same infectious energy that made the track a late-’80s club staple. The bass remains taut, the rhythm section clipped and disciplined, but there’s something new lurking in its DNA—a sharp, modern crunch that tightens the groove without suffocating it.
Belohnungszentrum spins the track into his own gravitational pull, bending it into a space where vintage funk and contemporary electronic minimalism don’t just coexist—they feed off each other. The result is both a tribute and a transformation, a rework that honors the past while shaking off its dust. It’s funk in flux, a groove both familiar and freshly rewired, proving once again that Belohnungszentrum isn’t just remixing—he’s reinterpreting the language of rhythm itself.
By the time Cameo unleashed Word Up! in 1986, they had already transformed from a sprawling 14-piece funk ensemble into a lean, synth-powered trio, helmed by the ever-eccentric and visionary Larry Blackmon. The band had spent the late ‘70s and early ‘80s shifting gears—from Parliament-Funkadelic-inspired deep grooves to sleek, mechanized rhythms that echoed the future of black music. But Word Up! was something different. It was a manifesto. And tucked inside its pulsating, synthesized walls was “Back and Forth,” a track that captured the push and pull of the era’s sonic evolution.
For years, Blackmon had been shaping a sound that balanced raw funk with the technological advancements of the time—drum machines, keyboard-driven basslines, and that signature Blackmon bark. With “Word Up,” Cameo crashed the mainstream, but it was “Back and Forth” that proved they could sustain it. The track rides a deceptively simple groove—slinky, infectious, and yet just odd enough to keep it unpredictable. The call-and-response chorus, paired with Blackmon’s elastic vocal phrasing, channels the kind of communal energy that funk thrived on.
Lyrically, “Back and Forth” is about movement—physical, emotional, sonic. It’s the sound of a band navigating an ever-shifting industry, where funk had to evolve or risk extinction. It’s about the rhythms that control us, the push and pull of relationships, of dance floors, of changing times. “Back and forth, side to side,” Blackmon chants, as if directing not just a dance but a cultural transition.
Cameo’s shift into the ‘80s wasn’t without casualties. The larger-than-life brass sections were gone, the live-band ethos distilled into something punchier, more digital. But “Back and Forth” proved that the heart of funk wasn’t in its instrumentation—it was in its DNA. It was in the way a bassline could make you move, in the way a single phrase could hypnotize a crowd, in the way Blackmon’s unapologetic weirdness could somehow feel like the coolest thing in the world.
As the final synthesizer stabs fade out, “Back and Forth” leaves behind a legacy—not just as a club anthem, but as a document of funk’s evolution. It’s a song about adaptation, about resilience, about keeping the groove alive even when the ground beneath it is shifting. And in that, it remains one of Cameo’s greatest statements.
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