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GRAMMYs

Stevie Wonder

Photo by Rich Polk/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

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Best "Motown 60: A GRAMMY Celebration" Moments 5-amazing-moments-motown-60-grammy-celebration

5 Amazing Moments From "Motown 60: A GRAMMY Celebration"

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Produced by Ken Ehrlich Productions in conjunction with The Recording Academy, the three-hour tribute concert featured an array of performers from Smokey Robinson, Pentatonix, NE-YO,  Diana Ross, John Legend, Fantasia, Chloe X Halle, and more
Ashley Lyle
GRAMMYs
Apr 21, 2019 - 10:00 pm

Filmed in Feb. and broadcast on April 21 on CBS, "Motown 60: A GRAMMY Celebration" impressed, captivated, and inspired audiences with a full slate of performers and presenters who were there to commemorate the anniversary of the storied Detroit-based and internationally acclaimed black-owned record label. Produced by Ken Ehrlich Productions in conjunction with The Recording Academy, the three-hour tribute concert featured an array of performers from Smokey Robinson, Pentatonix, NE-YO,  Diana Ross, John Legend, Fantasia, Chloe X Halle, Meghan Trainor, Tori Kelly, Thelma Houston, Stevie Wonder and others. "Motown brought people together who didn't realize they had so much in common," famed Motown Records exec Berry Gordy said before noting that he initially had a vision in the beginning to make "music for all people." The stacked lineup of enthusiastic artists and a high energetic crowd signaled that his vision had indeed come to fruition.

"Motown 60: A GRAMMY Celebration" Highlights

Just in case you missed the celebration (or if you want some highlights from the "Motown 60" experience), here are five amazing moments from the show:

1. Diana Ross Serenaded Berry Gordy 

The legendary diva may have celebrated her 75th birthday this year, but she didn't miss a beat engaging with the crowd with stirring and pitch-perfect vocals. 

One highlight of the show included Ross having a special moment with Gordy at the end of her set, singing a rendition of "My Man" personally for him while saying, "Thank you for all you have done for my life. You are a gift to all of us." 

Diana Ross Performs A Moving Motown Medley

2. Commemorating Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" 

Another great part of the show included a segment celebrating the music of Marvin Gaye and how its material moved into the political sphere with his What's Going On album. Smokey Robinson himself commented how at the time Gaye told him he was "collaborating with God," while Gordy admitted his hesitation in Gaye making potentially polarizing music under the Motown brand. Nevertheless, Gordy relented, noting: "The value of what [Gaye] was writing was so artistic."

3. Ciara Brought Out Her Inner "Superfreak"

GRAMMY-winning artist Ciara paid tribute to '80s pop icon Rick James with a riveting performance of "Superfreak." Decked out in his signature beaded braids hairstyle and a tight jumpsuit, the singer delivered a flawless set with dancers in the background. Known for her entertaining performances, Ciara also performed James' classic "Give it to Me Baby."

4. Cedric the Entertainer, The Host With The Most

Cedric the Entertainer kept the crowd entertained with various skits projected on the screen throughout intermissions of the show. One hilarious part of his hosting duties was a segment titled "The First Four Bars," where audience members were challenged to name popular songs from Motown from the first four bars of the piece. Notable records like "My Girl" and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" made for an amusing part in the show where dynamic and fun guests played the game. 

5. Stevie Wonder's Grand Finale 

Stevie Wonder brought the house down with a mini-concert of some of his hits, as well as anecdotes of his time spent at Motown and how Gordy changed his life by believing in him as a child.

Highlights in the performance included renditions of "Master Blaster (Jammin)," "My Cherie Amour" and "Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours."  

In all, Wonder's set can be wrapped up in one sentence, spoken by an audience member attending the show's Feb. taping: "Stevie Wonder playing 'Isn't She Lovely' on a harmonica was something I never knew I needed."

Eve Talks Women's "Fabulous" Role In Motown

The Supremes

Mary Wilson (C)

Bettmann/Getty Images

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Remembering The Supremes’ Mary Wilson remembering-mary-wilson-of-the-supremes

The Supremes Were A Dream, And Mary Wilson Dreamt It

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The pop-soul vocal legends’ co-founder was the last original Supreme in the group—and the most devout believer in their original promise
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Feb 9, 2021 - 6:13 pm

The Supremes were still in high school when their star began to rise, and at the dawn of 1962, their co-founder, Mary Wilson, sat in a modern literature class pondering her relationship to others. For her final exam, she had to write an essay with a psychological bent. While addressing her chaotic childhood, Wilson inadvertently summed up her dynamic with the other Supremes—the wounded Florence Ballard and the dogged Diana Ross.

"I have developed a protective shell, which whenever I feel I may face a conflict, I draw into. Why? Is it because I subconsciously feel I might be snatched again?" Wilson wrote in her 1986 autobiography Dreamgirl: My Life As A Supreme. "I try to cover up my deficiency by developing a pleasing personality. Actually, underneath this, I am still a young and frightened girl."

Five years later in 1967, during a period where Ballard left the group in a tailspin, and Motown president Berry Gordy rebranded them Diana Ross and the Supremes, Wilson realized she was the last to hold onto the image of the group as a holistic triad. "I saw nine years of work and love and happiness fade away," she wrote. "The Supremes still stood in my mind as a dream from childhood, a wonderful dream that had come true. I believed The Supremes would last forever. Now I knew that even dreams that come true can change."

"With one look at Flo," she added, "I knew that dreams don’t die; people just stop dreaming."

Wilson went on to neither be a household name like Ross nor a tragic figure like Ballard, who wrestled with addiction until her 1976 death at only 32. Instead, she was the group’s nucleus, acting as a buffer between Ballard and Ross and soldiering on in their absences as the last original member. After The Supremes called it a day in 1977, she entered an inspiring second act, touring extensively, authoring books, stumping for artists’ trademark rights, and collaborating with the GRAMMY Museum on the Legends Of Motown: Celebrating The Supremes exhibit.

Tragically, two days after eagerly announcing new music on YouTube, Wilson died unexpectedly at her home in Henderson, Nevada on Feb. 8. She was 76. "I was extremely shocked and saddened to hear of the passing of a major member of the Motown family, Mary Wilson of the Supremes," Gordy said in a statement. "I was always proud of Mary. She was quite a star in her own right and over the years continued to work hard to boost the legacy of the Supremes. Mary Wilson was extremely special to me. She was a trailblazer, a diva and will be deeply missed."

Wilson’s journey to that burning, yearning dream—one of young infatuation on a Biblical scale—began on March 6, 1944, when she was born to a butcher father and homemaker mother in the sleepy town of Greenville, Mississippi. Hers was a long-delayed birth. "A little past midnight, I was finally born," she wrote in Dreamgirl. "I now wonder if my first appearance in life was somehow indicative of the path my life would later take. Even at my birth, I was a fence-sitter."

The family relocated from Saint Louis to Chicago before Wilson moved in with her aunt and uncle, Ivory "I.V." and John L. Pippin, who led her to believe they were her parents. When Wilson was six, she traumatically learned I.V. was, in fact, not her mother. "My whole world had been turned upside down," she wrote. "I'd trusted these people, and they had lied to me." Three years later, her father, Sam, lost his leg in a factory accident.

In 1956, with her birth parents in tow, Wilson moved to the Brewster Projects, a complex of government-owned apartment buildings. Despite the jarring change—and prevalent gang violence—Wilson viewed her new climes rosily. "It was quite crowded compared to suburbia, but I loved it," she wrote. "You had to learn to get along with all kinds of people." While auditioning to sing in a school talent show, a hurled insult from a classmate resulted in punches from Wilson.

"I was not a fighter," she wrote, "but I would fight to be part of a group."

One of the characters Wilson ran into in the projects was a young Diane Ross—she’d change it to "Diana" later. But she more immediately took to another neighbor, Florence Ballard, who she describes as a Hollywood-style beauty even then. After bonding over a shared love of singing—Ballard sang a mean "Ave Maria"—in early 1959, Milton Jenkins of the all-male vocal group The Primes approached her to form a female counterpart.

"Between her gasps for breath, I could see she was grinning from ear to ear," Wilson wrote. "She grabbed my arm and asked excitedly, ‘Mary, do you want to be in a singing group with me and two other girls—’ 'Yes!'  I replied before she even finished the question. It didn't occur to me to ask what the group was about, or who was in it, or anything." During a jittery rehearsal at The Primes’ bachelor pad, Wilson found herself next to Ballard, Ross, and a fourth girl, Betty McGlown. Their voices fell together effortlessly and gracefully. The Primettes were born.

With Jenkins as their manager, The Primettes pounded the pavement in local clubs until a series of connections—from Smokey Robinson to Gordy, who let them sing and clap on Mary Wells and Marvin Gaye recordings—led them to Hitsville, U.S.A.

Asked to come up with a new name, they pored over a list of them, suggestive of regality and class—The Royal-Tones, The Jewelettes. But the name Ballard settled on for the group telegraphed something else entirely: divinity.

As word of the Supremes extended outside town, Wilson noticed their similarities and differences more acutely. Ballard, who had survived a sexual assault by an acquaintance, had begun to psychologically fray. Meanwhile, Ross was pure quantum ambition.

"Flo, a Cancerian; Diane, an Aries; and me, a Pisces—three completely different, insecure people," Wilson explained. "What each of us saw in the other two were the parts of herself she lacked or couldn’t assert or tried to deny: Flo’s earthiness, my nice-guy demeanor, and Diane’s aggressive charm. We accidentally discovered that three separate, incomplete young girls combined to create one great woman. That was the Supremes."

"I saw the group as something bigger and more important than any one of us," she declared elsewhere in the book. "I was content to play on the team."

If the Supremes were a collective dream, the Supremes’ string of 1960s hits—most of them written by Motown's powerhouse Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting and production team—have a dreamlike quality. These are universal songs you hear at cookouts and supermarkets and in Ubers; thus, they tend to drift between life stages and experiences. And of their twelve No. 1 hits, Wilson appeared on each.

The group received two GRAMMY nominations—one for Best R&B Recording for "Baby Love," the other for Best Contemporary Rock & Roll Performance for "Stop! In the Name of Love." (In 1999, "Where Did Our Love Go" and "You Keep Me Hangin’ On" were added to the GRAMMY Hall of Fame, and in 2001, "Stop! In the Name of Love" followed suit.)

After Ballard left the band in 1967, Cindy Birdsong of Patti LaBelle & the Blue Belles took her place, and they continued as Diana Ross and the Supremes. In 1970, Diana Ross left the band to start a solo career, leaving Wilson as the final original member amid a succession of replacement singers and shifting band names, like "The New Supremes." They never recaptured the commercial success they once enjoyed.

However, Wilson remained their North Star, touring tirelessly, practicing yoga, and authoring Dreamgirl and its 1990 sequel, Supreme Faith: Someday We’ll Be Together. Her legacy also involves musicians’ rights; after non-founding members of the Supremes toured under the band name, she campaigned on behalf of artists’ trademark ownership. Wilson also fought for higher pay for musicians on streaming sites through her support of the Music Modernization Act. Her 2019 coffee-table book Supreme Glamour homed in on the iconic group's fashion, compiling images of their famous gowns.

Last Saturday, she appeared on YouTube with a blazing grin, vivaciously announcing new music through Universal Music Group, hoping it would come out before her March 6 birthday. Then, in her sleep, she slipped away.

But her dream remains, as long as there are listeners to make it their own.

GRAMMY Museum Announces Reopening Of "Motown: The Sound Of Young America" Exhibit

Stevie Wonder, Lula Mae Hardaway, Chuck Berry, Little Richard at the 1974 GRAMMYs

Stevie Wonder with his mom, Lula Mae Hardaway, and others at the 1974 GRAMMYs

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Stevie Wonder Wins Best R&B Vocal Performance grammy-rewind-stevie-wonder-shares-his-first-grammy-win-his-mom

GRAMMY Rewind: Stevie Wonder Shares His First GRAMMY Win With His Mom

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In the latest episode of GRAMMY Rewind, rock 'n' roll icons Chuck Berry and Little Richard present Wonder—and his beaming mother—with the GRAMMY for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for "Superstition"
Ana Monroy Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Jul 10, 2020 - 10:11 am

In the latest episode of GRAMMY Rewind, GRAMMY.com takes a journey back to the 1974 GRAMMY Awards when a then-23-year-old Stevie Wonder took home his first four GRAMMY wins for music for his classic albums Talking Book (1972) and Innervisions (1973).

The soulful musical legend had already earned six GRAMMY nominations during four prior shows, beginning at the 1967 GRAMMYs for his 1965 hit, "Uptight (Everything's Alright)." Just seven years later, he'd take home his first of many golden gramophones.

In March 1974, rock 'n' roll icons Chuck Berry and Little Richard presented Wonder—and his beaming mother—with his first-ever GRAMMY, winning the Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male category for "Superstition," an iconic track from Talking Book.

Watch Stevie Wonder Win Best R&B Vocal Performance

Immediately before Berry and Richard jokingly fought over the microphone to announce the "Higher Ground" singer's name, the two dynamic forces of rock performed a high-powered medley of their music on the GRAMMY stage. Wonder, rocking a perfect afro puff and an embroidered earth-toned shirt-and-pants set, brought up his mother, Lula Mae Hardaway, who looked glamourous in a magenta gown and big feather boa.

"First of all, I'd like for you all, please, not to give this to me, but to my mother," Wonder announced, as Berry handed the golden gramophone to Hardaway. "My mother is going to accept the award for me. I am so very happy; you don't even know how happy I am," he said with a huge smile.

"I would like to thank you all for making this the sunshine of my life tonight," a radiant Hardaway said, nodding to her son's song, "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life," which would also win a GRAMMY that evening.

Read: More Innervisions: Stevie Wonder On Music, Politics & Love

The groovy "Superstition," released in October 1972 on Tamla/Motown as the lead single to Wonder's 15th studio album, Talking Book, won for Best Rhythm & Blues Song that night. "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life," the album's second and only additional single, won for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male. 

Later in the night, Wonder's next album, Innervisions, released in August 1973, less than a year after Talking Book, would win the prestigious Album Of The Year gramophone, rounding out an epic run at the 1974 GRAMMYs.

Stevie Wonder Wins Album Of The Year

His next two (also classic!) albums, Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974) and Songs In The Key Of Life (1976), would also win the Album Of The Year award, at the 17th GRAMMY Awards and 19th GRAMMY Awards, respectively, along with three additional wins each year.

To date, Wonder has earned 25 GRAMMYs, in addition to his six recordings inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame. He received the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996 and was named MusiCares Person Of The Year in 1999, among many other career accolades.

I Met Her in Philly: D'Angelo's 'Brown Sugar' Turns 25

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Adrian Younge looks through a box of vinyl

Adrian Younge

Photo: Courtesy of artist

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Adrian Younge On 'The American Negro' adrian-younge-talks-channeling-marvin-gaye-james-baldwin-create-american-negro

Adrian Younge Talks Channeling Marvin Gaye & James Baldwin To Create 'The American Negro'

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Adrian Younge's moving 26-track album, 'The American Negro,' combines spoken word, classic soul and free jazz sensibilities
Ana Monroy Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Feb 27, 2021 - 6:31 am

"Sadly, this album will never be out of date, but I know the universal language of sound will reverberate beyond my years. Listen closely. Raise your children to love like children; embrace humanity, regardless of hue."

With those words, Adrian Younge closes his latest album, The American Negro. The moving 26-track album, released Feb. 26, combines spoken word, classic soul and free jazz sensibilities. 

Everything the Los Angeles-based multi-hyphenate (He's a multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, singer, and label head) does pays tribute to his roots and is filled with heart and soul. Beyond using analog equipment to pay homage to golden era soul records of the '60s and '70s, he's composed T.V. and film scores for "Luke Cage," Black Dynamite and others. On his latest musical project, he crafts a haunting, powerful soundtrack of America and her racist past and present. With it, he shines a light on the harm this country has inflicted on Black people so we can enact change and move forward together.

 

Ahead of its release, GRAMMY.com caught up with Younge over Zoom to learn more about his vision for the project—which also includes a film and a podcast—and how Marvin Gaye and James Baldwin inspired it. The "Revolutionize" artist also explains the magic of analog recording and the power of spoken word.

Your powerful new album, The American Negro, is out now. What is your hope for this project once people get to hear it?

My hope for this project is that people receive the message. And the message about the evolution of racism in America. Most people don't realize how America pioneered the racism that has affected the entire world.

In America, we're a nation that is derivative from a slaveocracy. We didn't just have the enslaved, we're a nation that was formed around the concept of maintaining a slave system. So when our laws are being created, when our constitution is being drafted, when people are making money at the cost of Black lives, it's something that gets fermented into our system. It's become institutionalized and we still feel the vestige of that today.

And most people don't understand the connection to the past. A lot of people say, "Oh, there isn't slavery [anymore]," or "The civil rights laws were passed." But people don't understand that when an institution that you believe in is complacent towards certain people based on their skin color, it has a negative effect on posterity for all. With this album, I really want people to become better educated on what's going on and be able just to disseminate the message. That's what it's really about.

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Read: Terence Blanchard On The Music Behind 'Da 5 Bloods,' Working With Spike Lee And The Lasting Impact Of Marvin Gaye

In what ways did James Baldwin and Marvin Gaye inspire the music and the message?

So with Marvin Gaye, he's one of my favorite artists of all time, if not my favorite. My two favorite albums by him are I Want You and What's Going On. I have to put What's Going On on top because it's more important than just my enjoyment of hearing the composition of the melodies.

Not only do I love the composition, the melodies and the recording, but the message resonates on such a higher frequency than everything else. The reason being that he's talking about life. He's not just talking about love and "let's have sex" and "let's get married." He's talking about life sh*t. He's talking about changing the future for our children. He's talking about real change ecologically. He's talking about change in regard to discrimination to how the people coming back from patriotically serving in the war are being perceived. He's talking about so much that resonates with people like myself who want to be as virtuous as possible.

So that, coupled with James Baldwin, who is such an intellectual scholar and poet, talking about the Black consciousness, talking about what it's like to live our lives, even though we're in a place that looks at us as the face of evil, in many cases. His work combined with Marvin Gaye's work is what inspired me to make this. Because I don't really see many musicians trying to create that kind of work at this moment. People talk about certain issues, but not many have invested themselves to this degree of making something for the purpose of change.

Listening to James Baldwin's words and Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, it is crazy, how much they could have been written last year or this year.

It could be coming out in two weeks. That's how relevant it is, right?

On your "Black Lives Matter" track, you talk about how America is pretending to be blind. What do you think we, as a country, can do to finally stop pretending to be blind to this system of deeply embedded racial injustice?

There are so many things. First of all, just educate people. My seven-year-old daughter was talking to me last night about who she's learning about right now [in school.] She's learning about Abraham Lincoln. I'm like, "Oh, dope. What do you know? What are you learning?"

"Oh, he was the 16th president and he helped to free the slaves," [she said.] I was like, "Do you know where the slaves came from?" So I'm talking to her about that. I'm not ready to hit her with, well, did you know that Abraham Lincoln actually didn't really care about the disposition of  Black people? And actually, him and Thomas Jefferson at various times were trying to figure out how to send [freed] Black [slaves] people back to Africa. It's not like that's something I want her to learn as she grows. But this is the kind of stuff that we did not learn in school.

I say this all to say that with The American Negro, I want to stimulate thought and help people that don't have malice to act in a way that's not racist. A lot of people that act racist aren't doing it intentionally. They're just following custom and don't realize certain things. It's up to America to help them.

You're right, it's difficult to summarize all the things we need to do. Which is why things like The New York Times' 1619 Project are so powerful because it draws direct links between way back then and, for example, our banking system now. American capitalism was founded on slavery.

Even moreover, American capitalism is based on white imperialism, which is supported under the doctrine of manifest destiny. These white males at the time felt that they had the God-given right and authority to expand their nations throughout the world. Expanding westward in America and killing all the [Native Americans] was manifest destiny. "We're making their life better. They can be civilized." It's a very paternalistic perspective. And this is still happening today.

Can you speak a little bit to your reasoning for using spoken word on the album?

I was a law professor for a few years, and in my teachings I loved to research Jim Crow laws, Black codes, slave codes. These were laws that were created to subjugate the Black person and edify the white male and female.

I wanted to create an album where I'm synthesizing music that speaks to Black excellence. Music that is run underground, but it's so opulent with rich textures and an orchestra that you have to take it seriously. But at the same time, you have somebody speaking to you in a poetic, yet professorial manner. I guess oral pontification is my way of delivering a message to some people that may not otherwise hear it unless they're digesting it with a sweetener, which is the music.

With The American Negro, I also have a film coming out in March on Amazon called T.A.N. and I have a podcast that I started a couple weeks ago on Amazon as well called Invisible Blackness. All these pieces put together really help to further explain the ideology of racism here in America and throughout the world.

"And my real message with all this stuff is that race is a social construct… But you have to realize that and stay in touch with your humanity so you can really live life to the fullest and allow others to live life in a way that they're not ensnared by all this nefarious bullsh*t that the institutions have been promulgating for centuries."

Related: The Impressions' "People Get Ready" At 55: How Curtis Mayfield Created A Musical Balm For Black America

What's going on in the film T.A.N. and why was it important to you to create that visual counterpart to the project?

So T.A.N. is a film that is like watching the "Twilight Zone." It's a very psychedelic, very cinematic and thoughtful arthouse-type film that deals with a group of individuals in purgatory. They are discovering their own bigotry and really finding themselves through discussion. To me, these characters in the film represent so many types of people in America and around the world. I want people to watch the film and see if they could identify with some of the characteristics of these people. And if so, help them change some of their negative ways.

I've been moved by so many different songs, but there's something specific about spoken word. And I feel it on this album, where the songs are moving you and you feel it, but the spoken word, it feels like you're looking at me. It feels more direct.

It was something that was a real choice for me because I said, "All right, there's a substantive message that I want to get across. Then there's a musical message that I want to get across which is more important?" I said the substantive message is more important because I can make music any day, but I can't bring people in to listen to my thoughts every single day. I really want this to be a timeless piece that inspires people in a way that is not wholly musical, but contextual.

"I can make music any day, but I can't bring people in to listen to my thoughts every single day. I really want this to be a timeless piece that inspires people in a way that is not wholly musical, but contextual."

I've talked to a lot of different artists about the way that music is a medium to get powerful and radical messages across—look at Marvin Gaye's music. It will transcend his life, I think, for a long time.

Absolutely. What's Going On is the most important project he ever did. It's interesting because if you look at the periodicals of the time, in '71, Billboard said this is the greatest work Motown has ever done and it sounds like something derivative of Curtis Mayfield. Curtis Mayfield, in 1970, came out with his first solo album. Before that, he was doing stuff with The Impressions, but in the late-to-mid '60s his music with The Impressions was political. But it was not brazenly political. He had songs like, "If you had a choice of color, which one would you choose, my brother?" He was talking about Black consciousness in a very beautiful, non-offensive way.

And in 1970, Curtis Mayfield has a song called "If There's a Hell Below, We're All Going to To Go" where he's talking about Nixon, about ni****s, all that shi*. And then you have Marvin Gaye with What's Going On. And then in '72, you have Curtis Mayfield's Superfly and the Black Power movement is just getting bigger and bigger because we're going from the '60s where we're going from this non-violent protest to Black is Beautiful, Black Power. And it's something that is analogous to the concept of Black Lives Matter now because the white media saw Black consciousness as something that was violent and racist, and it's the same thing that's happening now.

My real message with all this stuff is that race is a social construct. Race is something that's a fallacy. We're actually all the same. And Black ain't better than white, white ain't better than Black. But you have to realize that and stay in touch with your humanity so you can really live life to the fullest and allow others to live life in a way that they're not ensnared by all this nefarious bullsh*t that the institutions have been promulgating for centuries.

You recorded the project fully analog, right?

Everything I do is analog. Everything.

What do you feel like you gain from using tape? Is there a spiritual element to using analog technology?

[Moves camera.] This is my reel-to-reel machine. Over there, there's a whole big live room and that's where I recorded the orchestra [on the album]. I record everything I do. The recording technique is very important to me because my golden era of sound is between '68 to '73. That's everything I'm about.

With this album, I really put myself to work as if I enslaved myself because I played every single instrument for the rhythm section. After that, I wrote for an orchestra and I brought them in. So, I'm playing everything from drums to flute to sax to bass to guitar to keys and then I'm ready for a full orchestra. I can't put myself in it any more than I am. I want people to feel my soul. I want them to feel how organic and real my message is. So sonically, it has to be right.

People make dope digital recordings. But for what I do, if you're trying to have that classic, timeless sound, you cannot do that with a computer. You can't do that by pressing the space bar. You have to have real instruments. And that's why I do that. It means a lot to me.

"I played every single instrument for the rhythm section. After that, I wrote for an orchestra and I brought them in…I can't put myself in it any more than I am. I want people to feel my soul. I want them to feel how organic and real my message is. So sonically, it has to be right."

Do you feel like there are specific textures that come across on tape that don't come across on digital?

Absolutely. With tape, I always explain it like this. When you record digitally, you're pouring water into a bucket with holes in it because digital recording just can't handle certain frequencies. The bass frequencies, all that, it just literally can't. The difference between analog is that you're pouring the same water into a bucket with no holes and it has a sweetener in it. You're getting something back and you're not losing frequency. Digital recording is the emulation of analog recording. So yeah, tape gives you a texture back to it. You can't copy tape.

I want to look a little bit more into the sonic elements on "Revolutionize." I really love how the sounds of it really dance with the repetition of "Black is beautiful."

In that song, I wanted to do something that was very chaotic and organized at the same time. I wanted to also give you the sense of Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." It's just a reminder that Black people deal with something called double consciousness where you see yourself in the mirror as you are, but you also see yourself through the vantage point of white America—that sees you as a criminal, as somebody that is feebleminded, as the problem of America. You have to synthesize these two perspectives in order to better understand who you are supposed to be. And this song [says], "Revolutionize the way you see yourself. Black is beautiful. You're beautiful."

And what instruments were on the song?

I'm playing drums, bass, piano, guitars, vibraphone, drums and various percussion. Then I wrote for a 30-piece orchestra, for strings and oboes and all that stuff.

For your parts, you had to obviously record them each separately?

Exactly. So I'll record drums first and then I'll record keys, then I'll record bass and guitar, and I just layer it.

Do you have the vision of what it's all going to sound like together or does it come together after?

I always know what the roadmap is. I'll sit there and say, "Okay, we'll make this change here, that change here. We're in this key here, I want this to be funkier, I want this one to be a little more chill. I want to have space so I can have more movement for bass here." I map it all out and I see it my head, and I just go in there and execute.

The Roots Of Adrian Younge Are So Black Dynamite

And did it feel different on this album doing most of the instrumentation yourself versus bringing in a band or collaborating with other people?

Well, it's interesting because most of the music I do I'm playing 90 to 95 percent of the instruments anyway. It's not really anything really new to me. My Midnight Hour album project with Ali Shaheed Muhammad [of A Tribe Called Quest], we both share in what we play, but everything outside of that is pretty much me playing all the instruments I know how to play. I really don't record with a band, per se.

Could talk about some of the specific people you honor on the album—James Mincey Jr., Margaret Garner, George Stinney Jr.? And one of your collaborators, Loren Oden, is related to James, correct?

Yeah, James Mincey Jr. was the uncle of my dear friend and collaborator, Loren Oden. James was somebody that was killed by the police unlawfully. He was choked to death, died by asphyxiation, like Eric Garner. And there was no judicial reprisal. Nothing happened to them.

Margaret Garner, she was enslaved and she ran away for freedom. When she was caught, she killed her child because she did not want them to be in perpetual bondage. America pioneered the concept of perpetual slavery, whereby your offspring is going to be the property of the enslaver in perpetuity.

George Stinney Jr. was the youngest person executed in America, a 14-year-old Black boy that was wrongfully accused of killing two young white girls. And he had a very speedy trial and he was murdered. So, this concept of vigilante justice has been plaguing people of color for centuries. I wanted to bring up certain names in order to inspire people to research the stories and find the connections between what happened back then and what is still happening now.

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Poll: What's Your Favorite Love Song? poll-whats-your-favorite-love-song

Poll: Are You Feeling The Love With Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder Or Lady Gaga—What's Your Favorite Love Song?

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From Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" to Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's "Shallow," what song gets you in the mood for Valentine's—or Galetine's—Day?
Ana Monroy Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Feb 12, 2021 - 12:20 pm

Valentine's Day is around the corner on Feb. 14, and we hope you're feeling the love in the air.

For GRAMMY.com's latest poll, we want to know what romantic jam you'll be playing to celebrate the love you feel for your partner, yourself, your furry friends or anyone else close to your heart.

Vote for your favorite love song now in our latest poll below, which includes timeless classics from Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Al Green, as well as lovely tracks from Adele, Rihanna and Lady Gaga.

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