being short on time

for the kind of banter that gets people to relax into an interview, I reach for a shortcut by asking a question I know he’s answered several times: how his second studio album, 85 to Africa, got its name. He retells the incendiary story of how he and his team found themselves heading for the airport on Atlanta’s interstate highway 85, after the owner of a grand house he’d rented for the project’s production, missed enough mortgage payments that the house was sold in an auction they weren’t told about. Its new owners arrived, police in tow, to kick them out. ‘The people that moved in were very pleased with it, even though they knew we weren’t the ones in the wrong, but they were very vicious, you know. They made certain threats and comments that were what I call implied racism, and it was a rough day. So we left. I had to go on my US tour, but it was followed by a couple of dates on the African continent. So because I didn’t have a chance to get a house in time, obviously, we just wound up staying in our last stop in Africa, which ended up being Joburg. We left from Lagos, came here. And that trip from Atlanta, on a direct flight to the continent, became the name of the project.’ >>