(October 20, 2021) Yummy Bingham is a music industry lifer. She was literally born into the music industry as the daughter renown record producer Dinky Bingham and singer Patricia Wyce, the niece of Bernard Wright and counting legends Chaka Khan and Guy lead singer Aaron Hall as godparents.
Bingham signed her first record deal at 14 and has filled every role in the business, from being a member of a singing group (Tha’ Rayne), being the go-to backing vocalist for a who’s who of R&B and hip-hop acts, and serving as a songwriter, label executive and solo act. At the young age of 35, Bingham has a lifetime of experience and proved to be a durable talent in an industry that has a history of chewing folks up and spitting them out.
Bingham returns to the spotlight with a release that has a musical arrangement that will be instantly familiar to fans of 1980s era R&B. “Tell Me,” Bingham’s latest single, samples The S.O.S. Band’s classic duet ballad “Tell Me if You Still Care.” However, being the student of music history that she is, Bingham does more than take an old school jam that happened to have the trap sound that’s hot now and then use it to make a song thematically unrelated to the original. Instead, she uses her songwriting chops to put her own spin on the song’s theme about demanding that a significant other say or do something to prove he’s as committed to this thing as she is.
Bingham places a premium on writing songs rich in lyrical content and telling stories derived from lived experience, and that virtue allows her to honor an R&B classic while also creating something distinct and substantive. Check out Bingham’s “Tell Me” here.
By Howard Dukes
Yummy Bingham – “Tell Me”
