Crack

In a landscape filled with autotune and trite love songs Aloe Blacc hits like a freight train straight from the golden era of Motown; when RnB was hip and singers had more to spit than boats of wealth, women and celebrity.

A first generation American born in LA to Panamanian parents and Jamaican Grandparents, Blacc is world weary and unafraid to take on the bigger issues of today. “My purpose for music is positive social change,” he says. Unlike many in the RnB genre of late his rise has been far from manufactured or rapid as Blacc has been honing his craft in one guise or another for the past 15 years. He made his first splash in 1995, teaming with DJ and producer Exile as an MC in indie-rap duo Emanon, gaining relative success with the album’s MC’s Like Me and Anon & On.

In 2004 Blacc broke out solo though and swapped his rhyming for a more paced Motown vocal, somewhere between Gil Scott Heron and Otis Redding. This culminated in the late 2009 semi-autobiographical breakout track I Need A Dollar, a song about a man made redundant by recession and, for my dollar, the song of the downturn.

With such incisive lyrics as "If god has plans for me I hope they ain’t written in stone/ ‘cus I've been working, working myself down to the bone/ and I swear on grandpa’s grave I'll be paid when I come home," I Need a Dollar caught the tone in the US and was named the theme tune for HBO's 'How to Make it In America' - a show, fittingly, about ambition and making end’s meat in the modern West.

Of being laid off himself, Blacc jokes, ”I figured I'm smart enough to find food somewhere. Years ago we lost the house. My dad said, 'Gimme a tent; I'll survive'. That's what it comes down to: food, clothes and shelter. Everything else is entertainment. And fortunately I can sing a hit!" What sets Blacc apart from his contemporaries though are his live shows. I was fortunate to catch him at Bristol's own Metropolis in late October and witness a performer at the peak of his game. For me, any man that wears a dickie bow and braces on stage is special, but one who can command a seven-piece band with the snap of his fingers is a rare breed. His live act demands response, whether singing, dancing or song suggesting, and thankfully with his charisma and preferred late show starts (this set ran midnight to 2am), response is what he got. Covers of Billie Jean and Greenday’s Basketcase mixed with instrumental funk breakdowns and rambling stories turned what could have been a straightforward gig into a party that lasted the night; taking the audience on a ride from maddened dancing during I Need a Dollar to pin-drop silence at the end of Make Me Smile.

His distaste for manufactured RnB was also on show as he asked the audience to go home and make an album of their 10 favourite songs and pass it on to somebody younger. “It’s down to each and every one of us to keep real music alive and pass on its joys, because if we don’t then nobody will teach the youth.” From personal, heartfelt stories to impromptu beat poetry it was clear that Blacc was out to leave the crowd thinking. Like his songs, he has opinions to share and enough flare – and not just on the sleeves of his velvet jacket - to make people listen. Not an easy task at any show, let alone with a lively Stokes Croft crowd at two in the morning.

With a recent appearance on Jools Holland and new album Good Times now available, calls that Aloe Blacc is the savior of modern RnB may well be clichéd, but more importantly they're probably right.



Words: Daniel Humphry

http://www.myspace.com/aloeblaccmusic

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