Search - Deee-Lite :: Very Best of

Deee-Lite were the happiest of accidents. The cuddly, mainstream-pop version of New York drag culture (frontwoman Lady Miss Kier was essentially a female drag queen) and deep club music, they stayed faithful to their pancultural, pansexual, musically omnivorous dance-utopian roots throughout their too-brief career. Even their biggest hit, the agelessly potent suite "Groove Is in the Heart," sounds like a bunch of unrelated ideas (a Herbie Hancock riff, a Q-Tip rap, cartoon P-Funk cameos, and a cutup diva-house vocal) that bumped into each other and decided to have a party. They were never less than sweet, and rarely less than kittenish--or, as Kier put it, "De-groovy!" Compiled by the band themselves, Very Best is a curious cross section of their career, omitting a couple of singles from Infinity Within and including more songs from their uneven farewell Dewdrops in the Garden than from their hit debut World Clique. They do get points, though, for rescuing the kicking Masters at Work collaboration "Bittersweet Loving," whose straightforward four-on-the-floor points out how eccentric their beats and production usually were. --Douglas Wolk