Jimmy Carter, God bless him, created what was then called "National Black Music Month" in 1979, the year of my birth. This factoid along with my negligence of Black History Month (I just had to go with the 60th anniversary of the Feb Fab Four), has led me to the studio to shower praise where praise is due. For this year's "African American Music Appreciation Month," I struggled on limiting the number of artists to twenty-six. (I could have easily conjured one hundred musicians and we would still just be getting started!). In this slim selection, due to my self-imposed numbers game, I had to skip whole genres like jazz, funk, disco and electronic dance music. You will also notice missing name tags in the list like Wu-Tang Clan (too violent), Rhianna (too successful) and Biz Markiy (too goofy). I also switched out Jimi Hendrix's "Castles Made of Sand" for John Legend's "All of Me." Legend's spare piano ballad still gives me goosebumps.
What we do have here on Juneteenth is a wide assortment of artists and musicians that have been absolute stalwarts and innovators of American popular music. That is the one key with black music—just the breadth of talent on tap for this non-monolithic group. The one sad reality is that monetary awards were historically elusive for black artists.
For our foreign language contribution, we have MC Solaar, one of France's most popular hip-hop artist, who sings in both Spanish and French in track number three. Whitney Houston also represents with her moving ballad about practicing self-love. West coast hip-hop also represents here with fave artists Snoop and 2Pac. On the east coast, I seem to have developed an affinity for Philadelphia groups like the Roots and the Cross Movement, the latter a Christian hip hop outfit.
