Some years ago, in the late 1990s, I believe, I saw a music video on
cable television for a soulful pop-music song called "Drowning In Your
Eyes". I saw the video on a cable channel called BET (Black
Entertainment Television) which was only broadcast part of the time
here in Phoenix and which shared the same absolute channel number with
some other cable station on COX cable television. It was clearly and
unambiguously identified as the work of an artist called "Maxwell". I
had also heard the song on FM radio several times since then, across a
period of years, and each time it was identified as the work of
"Maxwell".
Today, Monday, February 18, 2008, I went looking for this song on the
Internet. I found a youtube.com video for the song, attributed to an
artist called Ephraim Lewis, who is said to have been killed by the
LAPD in 1994 under dubious circumstances. The song sounded virtually
identical, though with the poor audio quality I can only say that the
music was the same and that the vocalist, while VERY similar, may or
may not have been the same. I also found samples of a song by an
artist now identified as Maxwell, called "Drowndeep: Hula" said to be
inspired by and/or based on the aforementioned song, but this sounded
nothing like what I had heard before.
Note that the video for the song "Drowning In Your Eyes" which I found
on youtube.com, with the video/song now attributed to "Ephraim
Lewis", is NOT the video which I saw years ago on BET. More
interestingly, having seen video/still images of "Ephraim Lewis" and
of the artist currently identified on the Internet as "Maxwell", I can
definitely say that NEITHER comes close to looking like the artist
shown in the BET video I saw, who at the time was identified as
"Maxwell". Quite aside from the background in the video, which was
different (but might be attributed to a different version of the
video), the BET video artist called "Maxwell" was considerably more
"European" in his facial features than either the "Ephraim Lewis" or
the "Maxwell" currently shown on the Internet. Note that I am NOT
talking merely about features such as nose structure/width and skin
color, which might conceivably be changed by means of cosmetic
surgery, but also the basic bone structure of the jaw. The "Maxwell"
I saw years ago on the BET video had much finer and more proportional
features.
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