- On his second album, Josh Caffé embraces a hedonistic alter ego, making for some perfectly executed, pleasure-filled house.
- The sexiest stars have always found a way to tastefully write about pleasure. Janet Jackson sang of the "Pleasure Principle." Grace Jones, in her 2015 memoir, delivered a searing line: "I can be a pain, but most of all, I can be a pleasure." This spring, Janelle Monae released a swooning ode to romance, friendship, sex and all things sweet on her fourth album, "The Age Of Pleasure." On his second album, Josh Toko abandons the emotional depth of his Josh Caffé alias to lean into a sexed-up alter-ego, Poppa Zesque. In the album's liner notes, he invites listeners into this new hedonistic era with a maxim of his own: "No pleasure should remain guilty."
Toko has dedicated years of his career to celebrating Black and queer culture. As the cofounder of his tea dance Love Child alongside Jacob Husley, he's responsible for hosting the first kiki ball at fabric. His music takes inspiration from New York's early house scene, a time that saw the underground teeming with Black and Latino people, drag queens and gay men. His debut album, Black Magik Dawn, Pt. 1, was house music that traced all the deep, moody contours of queer yearning. The vibe, while sensual, was often beleaguered, like waiting up for a historically flaky date while stretching out in luxurious silk sheets. On Poppa Zesque, Toko envisions a world that is endlessly and delightfully carnal and there is rarely the slightest glint of disappointment.
The songs on Poppa Zesque are tantalizing, plump fruit perpetually dangling from a low-hanging branch. The songs detail club appraisals ("Do You Want To Take Me Home"), warm caresses ("Mania") and grinding hips ("Bunny Grinder"), some lasting just about as long as it should take to perform a salacious deed. Although the album's generous offering of erotica leaves Toko's mouth with ease, it is actually the result of a recent revelation. In the record's opening, "Justify My Sex," he admits: "I never used to be the kind of guy that could say the word sex without blushing. Well I can now."
On his second album, Toko not only says "sex," but he also moans "fuck" and other times demands, "kiss me!." And he does it all with the straightforward casualness of someone planning a Sunday errand, like on "According To Jacqueline," where he deadpans, "So, when are we going to fuck?" He goes high camp on "Meine Lederjeans," hissing in an exaggerated and ambiguously European accent, "Do you likes my leather jeans?" On the electroclash-leaning "Mania," things take an unexpectedly claustrophobic turn—strobe lights begin to flicker wildly, rendering flashbacks of dark, seedy concrete dance floors. He whispers, "Give me what I want," each word dropping in sync with a quintuplet of kicks.
This album's production, somewhere in between the sweaty, leather-clad shadows of '80s electro and the toothsome bounce of '90s Chicago house and New York bitch house, both subgenres of indisputably queer and trans origin, lends the album more of its provocative allure. On "The Rent Boys Want Their Money Back," Toko's huffy snarls are distorted so that he sounds like he's on the heated side of a telephone call. But what truly brings the song home is its jacking production, styled with synthesizers and knocking snares that sound like they were pulled straight from Laidback's 1983 hit "White Horse." The album's most notable ode to bitch house is "Nitalude," where New York queer icon Nita Aviance leaves a voicemail à la 2012 track "Let's Have A Kiki," insisting that someone pick up because there's "business to ah-ttend to." On "Sermon," the cheeky bounce of hard house is crafted from odd quacking sounds paired with blasting horns.
Even the curveballs feel fitting in Toko's rebel stronghold. On Poppa Zesque's title track, the album's electro-funk influences fully come to light—his voice vacillates between a growl and a rapturous squeal as he rebukes, "We all know the things you do / When you come into my house!" At the album's midpoint, it's the riveting climax of a series of glorious fantasies. The song embodies the narrative-building Toko has clearly perfected in the five years since his debut album, and that makes each track on Poppa Zesque burst with life and groove.
Tracklist01. Justify My Sex feat. Al White
02. Meine Lederjeans feat. Al White
03. Do You Want To Take Me Home
04. The Rent Boys Want Their Money Back feat. Al White
05. Poppa Zesque feat. Al White
06. Nitalude
07. Bunny Grinder feat. Al White
08. According to Jacqueline
09. Mania
10. Sermon
11. Outro/Dotty Side Effects