Cameo started off life at the beginning of the disco boom as a thirteen-piece funk troupe called the New York City Players. Formed by ex-Juilliard student Larry Blackmon (born 04/24/1956) (vocals/bass/drums/percussion), Tomi Jenkins (vocals) and Nathan Leftenant (trumpet/vocals) as an antidote to the perceived banality of the dance craze infecting New York, the renamed Cameo looked to the midwest funk styles of Parliament and The Ohio Players for influence.  

Cameo's early output didn't stray far from the model of most funk bands: long, mostly instrumental vamps based around a serpentine bassline and chicken-scratch guitar that masked the smarmy sweetness of their wretched ballads. Although their first single, "Rigor Mortis", was compellingly minimalistic and more interesting than most funk of the same period, they didn't hit their stride until the release of "I Just Want to Be" in 1979. With its clever use of synthesizers, original guitar sound and cryptic sociopolitical commentary, "I Just Want to Be" became one of the blueprints for black music in the 1980s.

Courtesy of Gregory Johnson's influential keyboard quotations and the mathematical precision of Blackmon's drum-programming, Cameo continued to push dance music towards a future of jagged edges and sharp contours with singles like "Shake Your Pants" (1980) and "Flirt" (1982). Alligator Woman (1982), Cameo's first fully realized album, honed their vision of stiff rhythms and stilted language as the sound of black America in the Reagan era. Although Cameo had relocated to Atlanta in 1982, their brand of splintered funk was an essential component in New York's hip-hop and electro soundscape. "I Just Want to Be" was sampled on an early hip-hop single, Afrika Bambaataa's 1981 "Jazzy Sensation". Tommy Boy returned the favour when Cameo pilfered a synthesized Ennio Morricone riff from Jonzun Crew's 1983 single, "Space Cowboy". Used on both "She's Strange" (1984) and "Single Life" (1985), the famous whistle from the soundtrack to The Good, The Bad and the Ugly lent a sense of ghost-town menace to Cameo's ultra-modern sound - an implicit indictment of Reagan's abandonment of the inner city to thieves and drug dealers. The whistle returned on Cameo's biggest hit, "Word Up" (1986), a Top 10 single in both America and Britain. With Blackmon's exaggerated, nasal vocals and its oblique lyrics like 'We don't have the time for psychological romance', "Word Up" was funk's last stand before it was completely swallowed up by hip-hop culture. The video made the transition complete: Blackmon sported an elongated flat-top haircut and an outrageous, Ferrari-red codpiece that signalled the beginning of an aggressive, black street style.

The political undercurrents of Cameo's lyrics were made explicit on their 1987 follow-up, "Skin I'm in". A defeatist answer song to Sly Stone's defiantly proud song of the same title. In 1990 Cameo was on the run again with "REAL MEN WEAR BLACK". Emotional Violence. Best of Cameo Vol1 1993. In the face of funk. Nasty the terrific life Album (1996). Best of Cameo Vol2.