Even if you have never heard of Aloe Blacc, there is a lot of chances you have heard his hit song ‘I need a dollar’ and if you don’t know what I am talking, you should listen to this infectious old soul tune.
The Californian Aloe Blacc, ex-rapper and music producer, who was giving a free in-store at Amoeba yesterday night, writes uplifting music, soul music for the modern time, with a positive message which mixes bits of gospel, funk, rhythm &blues and hip-hop. He has just released his new album ‘Good Things’, which contains a lot of soul, as he said last night, and we can understand it in the true sense of the term.
‘I need a dollar’, which was chosen for the HBO’s series ‘How to make it in America’ and is opening his new album, has this piano note joyously bouncing all along, a real old R&B feeling mixed with a rhythm that could belong to some hip-hop in search of more soul, with some desperately truthful lyrics, which have the potential to resonate true for many in these days of economic crisis.
His voice and style has been compared to the greatest soul singers, from Marvin Gaye to Bill Withers, and his style certainly brings back some blast from the past, a vintage soul, which seems to undergo a true revival right now, with people like Mayer Hawthorne, his Stones Throw Records label mate.
Rhythm & blues, and hip-hop? But his music has nothing to do with that of, let’s say, a Kanye West. Aloe Blacc wants to recapture something. Roots? Probably much more than some opportunistic jump on soul renewed interest of the moment.
People loved him at Amoeba last night, they loved his voice and his moves and asked for an encore although there is never one over there. Listen to him performing ‘I need a dollar’ and digressing in Bob Marley’s territory: