From Civil War-era slave songs to today’s hip-hop revolution, the musical contributions of African-Americans has been immense: more than merely influential–pioneering.
In VH1‘s new five-part miniseries, Say It Loud! (airing Sunday, Oct. 7 through Thursday, Oct. 11 at 10 p.m.), a diverse, insightful exploration of African-American music over the last 100 years, reveals the evolution of such genres as blues, jazz and rock ‘n’ roll, offering insight from some of today’s most prominent artists. Among those interviewed are Sean Combs, Ray Charles, Janet Jackson, Gladys Knight and Lil’ Kim, and what they have to say about music, sex, politics and more may surprise you.
Take a sneak peek at certain artists’ bold sentiments from each episode and watch a clip from the new series:
Episode 1: Keep on Pushin’ (Click here to watch a clip)
The transition from slave songs to pop-radio mega-hits has been a bumpy road–especially for women. Artists like Queen Latifah, however, entered the mainstream hip-hop world with minor turbulence, but it was an uphill struggle for many women in a decidedly male industry. How did Latifah persevere? What was her inspiration?
Queen Latifah: A problem came with the labels, with marketing and promotion money; there was still this stigma of a girl not being able to sell records. Salt-N-Pepa were the exception to the rule because they came out on an underground tip but then they went pop with “Push It.” They just blew up, so their record companies put money behind them. But there were a lot of females that came out and didn’t sell at all. I think it was more about the kind of records they were making than it was the fact that they were females. A few of us had to fight to get our record companies to kick up the money that we needed to go to where we needed to go.
Episode 2: Pursuing the Dream
You’ve seen him virtually everywhere. Videos, films, charity events… even promoting his own award-winning clothing line. Sean “Puffy” Combs (aka “Puff Daddy,” aka “P. Diddy,” as he’s called this week) has literally built an empire, most notably his own record label, Bad Boy Entertainment. Although he’s not exactly one to brag, he is, as he tells VH1, attempting to stay humble as best he can:
Sean Combs: Somebody had to come before us and open up some doors. I think they broke down doors and some of them snuck in the back but once they got in the party, they took it over. And then they opened up the doors so wide, and everybody is getting so paid and getting so much success that a lot of us did not really understand how much power we got hit with. And that’s when [guys like] Quincy Jones started pulling in the reins and started saying, “Yo, y’all gotta slow down. You have to realize how powerful y’all are and what this means. It’s not all fun and games. It’s too important.” I think things right now are real big but also on the right path.
Episode 3: Can I Get a Witness?
You listen to the lyrics. You know ’em by heart. And you think you catch the meaning. But as singer Al Green admits during episode three, one of his most beloved, “romantic” songs, “Let’s Stay Together,” actually has nothing to do with amorous affairs.
Al Green: I really wrote “Let’s Stay Together” after the marches and the fires and all of that. I wanted to say, “Let’s stay together, whether the times are good or bad, happy or sad.” I didn’t really write it for a girl. Everybody thought I wrote it for a girl, about a personal relationship, but it’s really not. It was a way of dealing with the change, because it weighed so severely on our own minds. I mean, John F. Kennedy died, then Bobby Kennedy, then Martin Luther King. From 1964 to 1968 was a very intense time.
But then I got to see Louis Armstrong on TV. I never cared about Louis Armstrong, but I saw this guy on TV. I sat there with my mouth wide open, because he was so phenomenal. It was real spooky to me. Remember, he’s this guy from the ’30s and ’40s who sung in places he couldn’t get service at. He couldn’t even stay at the same hotel he’s singing at. He had to go down the road. And he says after all this, “What a wonderful world.” And I’m going, “Yes, yes it is.”
Episode 4: Let’s Get it On
You may best know singer Lil’ Kim for her sexy videos and X-rated lyrics, but at heart, she derives her messages from decades-old tunes: the blues songs she heard as a child. To her, there’s no discernable difference between her racy brand of music and the melodies of yesteryear; there’s simply revision.
Lil’ Kim: I’m not the first artist to come out talking raunchy. I’m probably just the first female rap artist to do it, and I’m getting all the flak for re-creating it in a whole different persona. But you can take it all the way back to the blues days. Blues is hip-hop, in case you don’t know, that’s why I think one of my next records is gonna be a mixture of blues and hip-hop. But it’s gonna be a hard joint. A hardcore blues-jazz joint. That’s what makes good music, when you can bring old music back and make it new and hard and raw.
Episode 5: Express Yourself
In a world like the music industry, staying original is tough. That has never been a problem, however, for funk rocker George Clinton, lead singer of Parliament. But how is it that during the 1970s a young, African-American singer could change the course of his career and subsequently change the course of music as we know it? And how on earth could diapers be the answer?
George Clinton: Even The Temptations had begun to look nostalgic to us. So we said, “Wait a minute, we’re going the wrong way.” I realized that in order for us to [succeed], we had to come up with another image. We said, “Well, let’s take funk,” which is the mid-tempo music between rock ‘n’ roll, which was fast, and blues, which was slow–both of which had become very popular with the white musicians. We got the Holiday Inn sheets off the bed, the towels, and made diapers out of them. Stopped fixing our hair. We didn’t have to worry about suits anymore. We didn’t have to worry about being older, either, because now we were characters, and characters don’t get old. You can watch Mickey Mouse forever. We became Dr. Funkenstein and Maggot Brain and all of that. There were no boundaries for us.
All five episodes of Say It Loud! will rerun back-to-back on Saturday, Oct. 13 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on VH1.
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