Prospect recommends: Aloe Blacc

 



Aloe Blacc On tour nationwide from 3rd December

The soul revival has been going for the best part of a decade but it still turns up the occasional star. Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins III (aka Aloe Blacc) of Orange County started life as a rapper and then worked for the consultancy Ernst & Young. After being laid off he returned to music and was briefly hyped as the “voice of the recession” with the release of his modern-day dustbowl anthem “I Need A Dollar” earlier this year. His album Good Things abounds with songs about honourable, blue-collar endeavour and hardship, the lyrical offspring of Marvin Gaye or Curtis Mayfield. The music shimmers with 1960s horns, slick beats and Friday night glamour, providing the kind of spiritual uplift that only soul can bring.

On stage Blacc is a master of ceremonies, particularly fond of call-and-response with the crowd, and looks better in a bow tie than his British rapper-turned-soul-star counterpart Plan B. A word of warning, however: alarmingly accomplished dancers lurk at these gigs. Blacc parts the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea, clearing a makeshift arena for people to show off their moves. “Right here in the middle / Open up just a little,” he commands. “Now if you’d like to dance / This is your chance!”