★★★★★
If one track should be cited as a crucial influence on West Coast G-Funk, it's the contagious electronic talk box thwomp of Zapp's More Bounce To The Ounce. Unsurprisingly, the 1980 track has P-Funk connections: Zapp's Roger Troutman a Cincinnati childhood friend of Bootsy Collins, who co-produced and plays guitar...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
"More Bounce to the Ounce," exactly. Like Bootsy's other funk alternative, Roger Troutman is a bit light--even when he grooves rather than croons he bounces rather than whomps. What makes him a smash with the black audience where the Sweat Band is barely a swoosh is his drolly mechanical detachment--especially when he turns on the vocoder, he could be Gary Numan with ants in his pants, or Kraftwerk on the one.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
This idly functional, playfully mechanical six-cut dance LP tested my tolerance for innocent mindlessness, especially after I realized that my favorite tune appears on both sides. But unlike its predecessor it is a real dance LP--side one will function your ass off. And you'll want to play "Playin' Kinda Ruff" again.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Building upon the unprecedented success of Zapp's self-titled debut and group leader Roger Troutman's solo debut, The Many Facets of Roger, along with those two album's hit singles -- "More Bounce to the Ounce" and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," respectively -- Troutman returned in 1982 with Zapp II, a strong album again propelled by a mammoth single, "Dance Floor...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
Though Zapp III was far from a failure or even a disappointment, it wasn't quite on par with previous Roger Troutman efforts, being a little uneven and less of a commercial success. So when Troutman resurfaced in 1985, he shook up his formula a bit, focusing on an even collection of succinct songs rather than an album driven by epic anthems and filled out with shorter songs. To further communicate the concept that he was shaking things up, Troutman blatantly titled his album The New Zapp IV U...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
Where the first two Zapp albums were nearly flawless with their beginning-to-end knee-deep funk, Zapp III showed slight symptoms of becoming derivative. You are still strained to find any filler here, but the album's second side does pale considerably in relation to its first side, alluding to the possibility that group leader Roger Troutman may have finally begun struggling for new ideas at this point. These latter songs such as "Spend My Whole Life" aren't necessarily bad, just uninspired...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
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