Raheem DeVaughn wants to know what’s going on
CAN an 8-year-old have musical pillars? Sure. Raheem DeVaughn already had a few by that age Prince, Bob Marley, Earth Wind and Fire - and he says he’ll never forget the Sunday afternoon when one of them toppled: April 1, 1984.
“I had gone to the movies with my mother,” DeVaughn says of the moment that news of Marvin Gaye’s killing hit the airwaves. “It was raining and I remember hearing Melvin Lindsey on WHUR saying, ‘This not a joke, I wish it was an April Fools.’” Obviously, in that unforgettable instant, the 8-year-old DeVaughn had no idea he was destined to become an R&B star - but he remembers feeling like Gaye’s presence might end up coursing through the entirety of his life.
Thirty-six years later, he’s about to unveil his eighth studio album, “What a Time to Be In Love,” a collection of love songs and protest anthems where DeVaughn’s antigravity falsetto floats effortlessly back and forth between the sheets and the streets. And if Gaye’s influence over the proceedings wasn’t already obvious, DeVaughn has formalized it with the song “Marvin Used to Say,” a midtempo lament about how his hero’s shadow currently hangs heavy over an increasingly darker world. In the first verse, Marvin is gone and God might be, too. “They say the world is changing,” DeVaughn sings over some oily guitar chords. “It ain’t for the better. Wonder if God left us hanging.”
Ultimately, “Marvin Used to Say” blooms into a call-to-action against a litany of injustices, and by the time DeVaughn glides into the song’s conclusion, Gaye’s influence begins to sound more like an inheritance. DeVaughn isn’t pantomiming Gaye’s mission so much as continuing it. The singer hears it that way, too. “It’s what we’re here to do,” DeVaughn says. “Continue the work of our ancestors.”