Celebrating Black History Month, Pt. III: African America With The Top Down

Crispus Attucks

One early achiever was Crispus Attucks, a black man who was the first to fall in young America's struggle for independence. There were others, like Benjamin Bannecker who aided in the designing of the nation's Capitol building and the city of Washington D.C. From these humble beginnings the contributions of African-Americans continued. They were many and varied. But one of the most meaningful contributions we made was in music.

Forward March

As we now move forward we find that although millions listened and were infected by the sounds, danced to the swirling, demanding rhythms pumping from the soul of Black America like blood from a severed artery, few paid heed to the words, or heard the cries for justice, freedom, equality. They ignored the underlying threat that demanded immediate change.

For those of us who have been around long enough to remember the last four decades, each decade, each year was a journey we associate with some event, some song. This was true whether you were a small child or newly coupled in young adulthood or experiencing perhaps for the first time, the endearing rites of passage. For those of us who experienced love for the first time in one of these decades, the world had paired off and brazenly flaunted its couplehood. Life was a celebration of the least important aspect of love - the infatuation, the giddily addled effervescence of discovering that someone else on this planet listened to and liked the same artists, the same songs on the radio that you did. Real love, of course is much deeper, and needs no day of its own, no decade of its own - just perhaps a song of its own.

One of the decades that we will all remember was the one just past - the 90's. That was the decade in which many of those songs, along with black music and black artists, found new homes in the hearts of those who were in love and/or who needed something to reflect that love, that spirit. If rock reflected the energy of the 80's, rap and R&B penetrated the 90's with its energy and originality. This new wave of hip-hop and R&B had been building for years and this was the decade when it could no longer be denied. Blessed with a remarkable talent, collaborative spirit and a stack of infectious beats, the artists of the 90's became pivotal figures in the evolution of mainstream music in the studio, the amphitheaters and on the radio.

Hip-hip and R&B dominated the charts and radio airplay during the 90's. One of the reasons was the splintering of formats. Black radio split into mainstream, which played all the hits and appealed to teens and young adults, while their parents finally had their own station, usually called "magic-something." Although there were some songs and some artists that overlapped, the separation usually started with adult urban stations refusing to play any rap songs or artists. The 90's also saw the emergence of the so-called "smooth jazz" stations whose playlists contained up to 70% black artists. Some called these stations were called "Kenny G" jazz stations because he was often the artist most played and identified with that type of station. It was during the decade of the 90's the even white AC and Hot AC stations, joined with Top-40 in playing black artists that their audience research showed, grew up with and preferred this music.

Quite naturally, from a radio and music standpoint, in the competitive world of pop music, the 90's really was also the decade of research. Someone once asked in a primarily white focus group, "How do you explain your feeling for some of these R&B songs and artists that scored so high on your list of favorites?" The response, over and over, and in various forms was "These songs make me feel good. I feel part of a special time." And it didn't matter that Marvin Gaye, Barry White, Michael Jackson and Diana Ross and Prince, were African-Americans."

Because he has been so aloof and with his continuing troubles Michael Jackson has been so overexposed, we thought this time we would take an in-depth look at Michael in the 80's. And at the same time I thought we'd probe a little deeper into that mysterious little character from Minneapolis who for much of the decade of the 90's was "the artist formerly known as Prince."

Many said he was simply a "wild card," in every sense of the word. From his biggest selling album "Purple Rain," he engaged in a series of albums that were extremely and artistically adventurous, including "Parade," "Around The World In A Day" and "Sign O' The Times," which is generally recognized as his finest work next to "Purple Rain."

In 1992 Prince signed a big contract with Warner Brothers. This was shortly after the release of "Diamonds & Pearls," which was a huge hit in '91. That allowed him to have the political capital with Warners to ink a new contract that was very favorable. But bizarrely enough, immediately upon signing he started his efforts to extricate himself from the contract. There were several issues. Prince was concerned about the rate of pay for musicians. Record companies generally pay musicians 15 percent or less per album and he felt that was unconscionably low. He also felt that he wanted to own his masters. The problem was that he was so demanding unilaterally that they give him back the master tapes that he'd given them under previous contracts, that the talks broke down and stalled and the issues were never really resolved.

Issues were nothing new to Prince. Here was a guy who did not like rap music He thought it was sub-par musically without any musicianship value. Then, all of a sudden he turned around and adds it and it sounded extremely inorganic to his music.

In 1999 Prince worked with Clive Davis and Arista and put out a major label record called "Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic." What they were trying to accomplish with Prince was what Clive accomplished with Santana on "Supernatural" because Clive got Carlos Santana together with Rob Thomas from Matchbox Twenty and others. With Prince's record he did the same thing, encouraged Prince to go out and get with some young musicians. He did, to some extent. He met and worked with Eve, Annie DeFranco and Chuck D from Public Enemy. The problem was that it didn't really sound all that organic.

Prince

It didn't work out particularly well. It didn't sell. It wasn't a great record artistically. Regardless, Prince was and is a guy whose talent is going to be readily apparent to everyone. Besides making memorable music he exudes a generous spirit and toward the end of the decade, began to collaborate with other artists including Larry Graham and Gwen Stefani from No Doubt and Sheryl Crow.

The nineties was also a decade of collaborations. One in which artists took genuine pride in one another's work and often made appearances on one another's record, from a creative community, which was in some ways, reminiscent of the old Motown. This interchange was virtually unheard of in earlier decades because labels resisted having their artists going into the studio with those from other labels because they didn't want to split royalties or help boost other artists' careers.

These careers had been colliding and overlapping since the decade of the sixties when Bob Dylan sang about the times-a-changing in 1964. Beginning back then, rock and roll and rhythm and blues were still very much the rallying cry of the counterculture. Over the past four decades the times have gone right on changing. As for this generation and their children, second generation hip-hop and R&B fans - they rule the roost economically. And the rebellious attitude that once made this generation a threat to the status quo now belongs to the new Generation X, or Generation Y or Generation Jones. In the disposable world of popular art and entertainment the real test of time has never cut a whole lot of ice or mustard. For some their music is hauled off to a place of execution and replaced by what sounds like its exact opposite - alien noises that don't go with anything. That's because there are and will continue to be generational gaps.

Regardless of which generation you represent, we hope you will continue to enjoy and learn from our Black History Month series. Keep in mind that in 2008, with the technology explosion and the on-going, emotional tug of war, even for those whose loyalties should seem obvious, they may not. But for them, and we hope for you, there's still a place you can go. A place where like in a very dark room after a while your eyes adjust and you suddenly find you can see and understand what you're hearing. You've just experienced a part of musical African America with the top down. It's like a creeping recognition that the things that now define you reflect only where you happen to be when the music stops. Then you suddenly realize that the sun may have come up after all.

(Next week Part IV).

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