NOMAG: On your most recent album you quote Gil Scott-Heron in your track “Politician”; In the wake of his recent passing, would you care to say a few words on what he meant to you as an artist and how you view his legacy?
ALOE BLACC: In a few words… an artist like Gil Scott-Heron is important… he was an intellectual, he gave me a cue on how to use my music as a voice that’s both political and socially conscious and basically relevant, not just for making songs or an artistic doodle, but to make music that’s both relevant and impactful. That’s what Gil Scott-Heron was to me: someone who’s lyrics were not only relevant but very sincere and candid. He opened his life up to people in his songs, which is something I’m still striving to do.
N: When you say that you’re still striving to open your life in your songs, on the song which you’re now most known for “I Need A Dollar” there seems to be quite a bit of candor. We’re in the worst economic depression since the ‘30s but there’s this huge gap between day to day experience and what pop artists are talking about. Could you comment on the disconnect between pop-culture and it’s audience?
AB: The disconnect is caused by the [pause] ‘robustness’ of capitalism and conspicuous-consumption. We’ve reached a point where capitalism is the culture, and capitalism dictates cultural modes. So what you hear on the radio may or may not be representative of capitalism in terms of its content but in it is representative [of culture] in terms of it’s presentation, because it’s just music made for sale, it’s not being made for art, it’s being made strictly as a product to sell. It’s no different than those little plastic toys you buy for twenty-five cents in a machine.
N: In that case do you feel yourself somewhat isolated in terms of what you’re doing?
AB: No, not at all. I don’t feel isolated because I surround myself with musicians who are making authentic and genuine music, and artists who are making genuine art. But I feel that there is definitely a challenge in terms of breaking barriers in the US, as opposed to the UK, but it seems that Europe is more of a meritocracy when it come to presenting music.
N: Why do you think [Europe] differs so much from the US in that respect?
AB: Well, in the US you have to have money to play the game, even to get into the game. You have to pay somebody to be on the radio or you have to be involved in the business only to benefit those people who are going to help you. I’ve found that in Germany and in France for example, that it’s not THE way it is. If the music is good they’ll play it.
N: Do you think that there’s still a place in North American culture for music like yours?
AB: Of course, but perhaps not in the popular media. When the popular media tries to seize it, it will have its day for a few months, then it will go back to being “niche” and ‘specialized’. But, I feel as we get older we need music that talks to us as adults, we’re not in the nightclub all the time, we’re not out partying all night with friends. We need music that can also serve as the soundtrack to those quiet moments at home and the long drives. The real mature issues that we face as we grow older. So that’s what I like to make music for, something that can serve my friends.
N: Getting back to culture as a commodity, on the new album you have a track called “Miss Fortune” which deals with money and its effect on people, could you take us through that song?
AB: It’s a critique of capitalist culture, I wanted to play with the ‘double-entendre’ of Miss Fortune / misfortune. So I wrote the story about how a man falls in love with money and having misfortune as a metaphor for money.
N: In the lyrics you seem to suggest that having too much money, or being given too much money reduces you to a child like state, could you expand on that?
AB: I think it can… I grew up with a lot of kids whose parents were really, really rich and I think having too much too soon kind of debilitates you. You won’t have the same kind of resourcefulness of someone who has to struggle for it.
N: I recently read that you started listening to folk music, and especially Joni Mitchell, while you were in college, and from that point on you decided that you were going to sing. Could you tell us how that music changed you artistically?
AB: It was the sincerity of it all. I’m a fan of melody, I’m a fan of good voices, and it just happened those were the voices and the lyrics that ended up changing my perspective on the kind of music I wanted to make. People like Joni Mitchell, and even Cat Stevens. When he was younger he was strictly a pop artist, but he was very sincere, you could tell in his voice and his writing. Other artists had the same thing, like John Lennon or the Brazilian singer Jorge Ben.
N: You’ve also said one of the reasons you moved away from hip hop, and I’m sorry if I’m misquoting you, was that there were “too much ego and bravado”, do you think there’s still room in hip hop for conscious artists, like there was in the 80’s and early 90’s?
AB: Yeah there’s definitely room, I think hip hop is largely dependent on good beats and as long as the beats are good you can put anything on top of it, so yeah there is definitely room for positive content.
N: Would you consider going back [to hip-hop]?
AB: I never really stopped. Right now I’m 30 songs deep with DJ Exile and we want to put out another album. We just have to figure out on the business side what’s the best way to introduce my new fans to my hip hop music.
N: For some, especially your younger fans, this maybe the first time they encounter the kind of soul music you’re performing, and they may have no frame of reference for you musically. Could you recommend five albums that have shaped you or that you consider essential listening?
AB: Alright… five albums, doesn’t matter what style?
N: Whatever you like.
AB: The first album would be from Tribe Called Quest, probably “Midnight Marauders” even though I want to say “People’s Instinctive Travels….”, which is the first album that comes to mind, but “Midnight Marauders” is my favourite. Then an album by a guy called D.J. Rogers, who was a soul singer in the mid to late 70’s, called “It’s Good To Be Alive”, one of my all time favourite albums. [Pause] “Headless Heroes Of The Apocalypse” by Eugene McDaniels, it’s very formidable from a political and sociological standpoint, but it’s also very satirical. Hmmm… Maybe an album like “Asia” by Steely Dan.
N: Why “Asia”, for all the samples? Seems a little left-field…
AB: I don’t know what it is about that album… that one in particular, because I’ve been listening to it so much recently, and maybe because it is so sampled… I just feel Steely Dan, I just feel the absurdity in their lyrics and love the way the wrote and produced their songs. And as a trumpet player I love the horns in their songs, and I love the harmonies… So one more album?
N: Sure.
AB: Jay-Z the “Black Album”.
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SHOW REVIEW
About half way through the Aloe Blacc show last Saturday at Le Belmont, I turned to Montreal Mirror staff writer Darcy Macdonald, and asked him if he could sum up what we were watching: “This is the closest thing to seeing Motown in the 60’s that I will ever witness.”
For poor saps like Darcy who aren’t spending their tax returns building time machines with parts they haggled from Canadian Tire, this is the closest they will ever come to witnessing real original Motown. Not just in the music, but also in the swagger of Aloe himself. If anyone wanted an atomic reminder of how fucked up the modern music industry has become, this show was a good start. How the modern marketing geniuses, who spend millions of dollars each promoting domestic abusers, auto-tune hacks and artists who think we’re too damn stupid to remember Madonna, missed out on one of the decades most authentic showmen, boggles the mind. Blacc oozes his personality on stage, had he invited every woman in the audience backstage, the bar would have filled with spilt beer and the corpses of a 100 trampled boyfriends in less time than it takes to read this sentence. If this music thing doesn’t work out (and it will, unless we’ve utterly shit the bed as a culture) Blacc has a lucrative future in the cult leader /sex harem field. Blacc’s voice has the range and tone of yester-years most accomplished soul artists and his backing band the Grand Scheme is the tightest musicians this side of the Roots.
During his one hour set he played most of the songs off his latest album, which he capped with, of course, “I Need A Dollar”, followed by a mellow encore of “Billy Jean.” Next time Blacc is in town, do yourself a favor and go see the show.
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By François Dupraz
