BEST OF TASTY CLIPS: How Harry and Quincy helped light Aloe Blacc’s ‘artivism’
By Bill Vaughan
Entertainment Writer
World renowned singer-songwriter ALOE BLACC (“I Need a Dollar,” “The Man,” and Avicii’s “Wake Me Up,” and new single “For Real” with Eric Hirshberg) has been on a mission to use his voice for positive social transformation.
The soulful crooner told TASTY CLIPS so in a past chat that led to him running off songs that inspired him to “become the ‘artivist’ that I am,” like renditions of Aretha Franklin’s “Think,” Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” and Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi.”
Blacc peppered awareness in his catalog giving a nod to the King of Pop himself.
“I like to add a little bit a medicine with the sugar in the way Michael Jackson would do,” he stated. “[MJ] was the bomb when it came to social messages in his music.”
Like many, he considered Jesse Williams’ BET Awards 2016 acceptance speech about police brutality, the most important words said by any celebrity in decades. Blacc revealed that the “Grey’s Anatomy” actor was following the guidelines they and others were given at a meeting of “Black Hollywood” called by Harry Belafonte at Quincy Jones’ home.
“He took it to the next level,” Blacc said. “There were other people who were in the audience who have not done what Jesse has been doing. People need to step up and really start being vocal. My biggest comment at these meetings — because there was another with Van Jones at Russell Simmons’ home — is that we need eternal vigilance, but it’s also about action items.”
For Blacc, that was about boycotting companies engaging in prison labor because he believes private prisons that are incentivized to keep people incarcerated for profit causes a conflict of interest to our legal system.
He reasoned: “If I can convince Ciara, Rihanna or Beyoncé to create their own lingerie line it would be helpful in creating a boycott for Victoria Secret because they wouldn’t get billions of Black dollars that they currently receive.”
On the subject of cultural appropriation, Blacc feels that [artists like] Justin Timberlake may be guilty but not with malice like the Sun Records owner who said of Elvis Presley they were specifically looking for a white kid who could do what the Black kids do for more money.
“I think [JT] genuinely is a talented musician/songwriter,” he said. “An artist who has a feel for what is good music and presenting it. He happens to be white. It’s different when you’re from Australia with an Australian accent singing and rapping like you’re from Atlanta. No names to be uttered. You already know who I’m talking about. That’s cultural appropriation.”
Even if it’s produced and presented by a prominent Atlanta rapper? “I’d say that’s cultural apimpriation,” said Blacc who begins an engagement Feb. 12–15 at Blue Note Los Angeles prior to a show on Feb. 16 at Margaritaville Palm Springs’ Plaza Theatre.
For more than 11 years, Bill Vaughan has kept Wave readers up to date with the latest news in entertainment. Now, we are collecting some of those past columns into what we call the Best of Tasty Clips. To contact Vaughan, visit his social media pages on Facebook and Instagram or @tasty_clips, on X @tastyclips, and on LinkedIn to William Vaughan.
