She bluntly puts the responsibility for the violence in cities seen in the wake of George Floyd’s murder back on historic white power structures. The video continues after the song ends, with DeVaughn holding up his fist in solidarity as a recording of Tamika Mallory, one of the organizers of the Women’s March, plays.
“But it also gave me an opportunity to pay homage to one of the greats.” “It gave me an opportunity to talk about the things that are currently going on in this country and the planet,” DeVaughn says. The song could have easily served as a straightforward tribute, but DeVaughn instead uses it to weave a lament for the state we’re in: the death toll of the pandemic, systemic racism felt both personally and nationally, the increasingly everyday threat of global warming. The video–with groovy set design and DeVaughn, in Marvin Gaye-esque beanie, crooning into the mic–hearkens directly back to Gaye’s era. “I want to make music that brings people together but also speaks to social change.” Looking Back to Look AheadĭeVaughn’s track “What Marvin Used to Say” off What a Time, which received a music video this past March, made that influence clear. “Back then Marvin was talking about war, and global warming before we knew what global warming was, and the pollution of the sea,” DeVaughn says. What a Time reaches back through the decades to the ‘60s and ‘70s to find a voice that can address what DeVaughn is seeing right now, perhaps the only voice expansive enough to capture the chaos of the present: Marvin Gaye, the R&B legend behind the early ’70s masterpiece What’s Going On. “It’s never rang this much, in fact.”ĭeVaughn has received renewed media attention as he’s embraced the influences that shaped him. “The phone has been ringing like crazy,” Raheem DeVaughn says of the current state of his career. He achieved major label success starting in 2005 with his Grammy-nominated debut album and hits like “Woman” and “Customer,” then went independent in 2013.īut for all of DeVaughn’s decades in the business, his most recent albums, including November’s What a Time to Be in Love, have connected in a new way. Raheem DeVaughn, 46, has been known and loved in DC since his early days in the DC underground R&B music circuit.
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