What the...You Mean I Can't Sing?! is the fourth studio album by Melvin Van Peebles. Released in 1974, this album marks the first traditional music effort by Van Peebles. Previously, Van Peebles released the experimental spoken word albums Brer Soul, Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death and As Serious as a Heart-Attack. What the...You Mean I Can't Sing?! largely derives from funk and soul music, much as Van Peebles had featured on the soundtrack to his 1971 film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. Background Prior to the recording of this album, Van Peebles had released a trio of experimental albums, Brer Soul, Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death and As Serious as a Heart-Attack, which were considered to be spoken word at the time, due to their use of sprechgesang. Modern critics have since dubbed these albums as precursors to hip hop music. Van Peebles wanted to record an album that showed that he could perform in a more traditional form, as opposed to the style he had used on his previous albums, titling it What the....You Mean I Can't Sing?! because of this. Music style and lyrical themes What the....You Mean I Can't Sing?! places more emphasis on harmony and melody, aspects that Van Peebles felt he had "subliminally pushed into the background" on his previous albums. While Van Peebles said that some of the album's songs could have been written in a spoken word form, he decided to include more musical instrumentation than he had previously. Allmusic writer Ed Hogan compares Van Peebles' vocals to "Louis Armstrong, the comedy albums of Bill Cosby from the '70s, and the wild antics of cartoon voice artists Mel Blanc and ". Another Allmusic writer, Thom Jurek, compared Van Peebles' delivery to that of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Van Peebles describes his vocal style as "the old Southern style", which was influenced by singers he had heard growing up in South Chicago. Van Peebles also said that he was influenced by older forms of African-American music: "[...] people like Blind Lemon Jefferson and the field hollers. I was also influenced by spoken word song styles from Germany that I encountered when I lived in France." The music on What the....You Mean I Can't Sing?! largely derives from funk and soul music. Van Peebles' lyrics encompass themes ranging from lighter and humorous to more socially conscious themes, although it is less