Warn er Brother

Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

If someone stopped me on the mean streets of Lithonia, Georgia and asked me who I believed are the best musical artists of my 44-year generation…





I’d first say, hey man, where’s your Obama shirt?

When I got a bit more serious, the names: Stevie Wonder, Beethoven, Marvin Gaye, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Quincy Jones, Ray Charles, Earth Wind and Fire or (my personal favorite) but not necessarily my final answer, Omar, would probably come to mind.






However, if the street talker asked me who the most relevant artist of my generation was or is? My answer (without hesitation) would be Prince.

While his live show is simply a must for the living, his recorded music is (for the most part) hit or miss with me. I rarely toggle through my music collection and pull a Prince joint off shelf. However, I love his middle finger industry swag so much that you’ll find countless discs of his in my assortment of artists.



On Tuesday, March 31, The Artist Currently Known As, added another gem to his storied catalog. This time, unveiling the pop life’s protégé, Bria Valente, as a bonus disc to this neatly completed electronic trifecta, just in time for spring break. Aside from the outstanding and refreshing new music, the soon-to-be 51-year-old musicologist just continues to shatter the realm of conventional [industry] wisdom, while driving a stake through the radio slave owner’s counterproductive heart. That fact alone earned my recession-friendly, $11.98 and honestly, it’s worth twice that. Most gems are. His latest sparkler, LotusFlow3R, was unleashed with an exclusive distribution deal with local retailer, Target, and the Purple One’s member’s only website. You don’t have to be a fan of Prince’s music, but rather a champion of revolutionary change (there’s that word again) to understand why his pivotal positioning is paving the way for aspiring artists not even born.

The head-nodding, down-tempo (78 BPM), rock-laced Colonized Mind is currently my favorite, but that could change at the next listening session. Right now, the headphones sound like this:

If you look, you’re sure gonna find
throughout mankind’s history
A Colonized Mind
the one in power makes law
under which the colonized fall
without God, it’s just the blind leading the blind

Quite naturally, when you are digesting lyrics of that magnitude, it becomes increasingly difficult to listen to a melody about an umbrella. Prince’s not-so-passive “rain” on commercial radio’s formulated success is greeted equally with your local radio station [and corporately held entity] shunning any FM rotation spins from anything outside his Warner Bros contract. And, to think they lock Bloods and Cripps up for being gangstas. Now that’s funny.

I think people have gotten so complacent and indifferent to some of America’s subtle, yet shackled conditions that an independent artist is the equivalent to an Independent. Sadly, you’ll never live long enough to see either center stage in the White House.

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1 Love,
Ray Lewis