Teachingtools
L.A.’s Adrian Younge aims to fight racism with music, a podcast and a film
Back when he was a professor at the American College of Law in Orange County, Adrian Younge spent his days teaching his entertainment law students how to draft and understand business contracts.
Now a successful composer, producer and musician, the Highland Park resident has embarked on an even more ambitious teaching challenge. Younge aims to explain, dissect and ultimately combat racism with an ambitious project that includes a podcast, a short film and a concept album titled “The American Negro.”
“I needed to create something to teach people, to educate people because I believe when people are educated it helps to curb racism, because racism is a learned behavior. You’re not born a racist,” Younge said.
The 42-year-old, who grew up in Fontana, has released solo music and teamed with artists like A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad. The pair formed the hip-hop, jazz and soul fusion duo The Midnight Hour, which released a 20-track, self-titled debut album in 2018.
He’s also produced music for artists like Kendrick Lamar and Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah while composing for television shows such as “Luke Cage” and the 2009 film “Black Dynamite.”
But with songs that touch on topics like Black identity and consciousness, police brutality, slavery and other complex topics, he calls “The American Negro,” which was released in February to coincide with Black History Month, the most important creative accomplishment of his life.
“I wanted to contextualize what racism is, first of all, and then talk to people about things we can do, ways we can live our lives in order to further deter these concepts, the institutionalization of racism,” Younge said.
Younge played all the instruments on the record except for the orchestral ones. For those, he scored the music for a 30-piece orchestra. The album mixes the music with vocals by various singers and spoken word pieces performed by Younge.
“It’s a professorial take on the evolution of racism pioneered by Americans, and the music is psychedelic, soul and jazz,” Younge said.
Using the law
While he had only a couple of music lessons as a kid, Younge said he’s always had a fanatical love for music.
“I just literally always wanted to make beats. Some kids growing up, they want to play video games all day; I wanted to dance and be a b-boy and DJ and make beats,” he said.
When he turned 18, his parents gave him an Akai MPC-2000 beat machine and he started sampling music. Wanting to go further, he got himself a guitar and piano and just taught himself to play, relying more on work than natural ability.
“I was born with the talent to be disciplined,” he said.
It was this same mentality that led him to become a lawyer, studying at the American College of Law. He didn’t want to practice law, though; he wanted to put his education into practice as a musician.
“It was for the purpose of building my own empire. If I’m doing my own thing, I want to have an extremely high education that’s going to benefit me. So it put me in a position to be an artist that can draft and read contracts,” he said.
He’s also an artist who’s continuing to educate with his new album.
A powerful message
Younge started writing “The American Negro” when the coronavirus pandemic took hold a year ago. His intention was to create a message record along the lines of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” but in his own style.
“Marvin Gaye’s album musically speaks on bigotry in the world. What my album does is it provides a diatribe, a monologue on racism, and then it’s just supported by music,” Younge said.
And even before you hear the first note or a single lyric, it’s clear the album seeks to challenge listeners and at times make them uncomfortable, even angry. The front cover is a disturbing black and white image of Younge with a noose around his neck hanging from a tree. The back mirrors the cover, with a note placed on Younge’s back that reads “This [n-word] voted.”
Younge explained that the image recalls lynching postcards that were a common way to celebrate the murder of Black Americans at the turn of the 20th century. They also served as a warning against any person of color seeking to eradicate racial inequality, he said.
“This helped to form the machinations of complacency towards the death of Black people by law enforcement. Dying by asphyxiation, me killing myself by asphyxiation shows my connection to the Eric Garners, to the George Floyds, to these people that were choked out and murdered by the police without just cause,” he said.
The album also has a very close connection with another Black man who died of asphyxiation in police custody.
The song “James Mincey Jr.” is about a 20-year-old apprehended by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1982 who died after being put in a chokehold.
It’s co-written and performed by Loren Oden, who’s known Younge since high school and sings on nearly every track on the record.
Oden is also Mincey’s nephew.
“It keeps the spirit of my uncle alive, it keeps the story alive. It’s a really important piece,” the singer said. “It’s something we can’t look away from.”
The title track, “The American Negro,” was inspired by the limited, often pejorative vocabulary used to describe Black people and how it affects their perception as Americans.
“There are only so many terms we have to choose from and they all suck. So basically we chose Black, and Black is what has empowered us, Black is part of our Black consciousness,” Younge said.
The song “Revolutionize” is another standout on the album. The jazzy, upbeat music is juxtaposed against lyrics that explore how Black people see themselves.
“I’m talking about double consciousness where I have to look in the mirror and see myself as who I am, but at the same time, I have to see myself through the vantage point of White imperialism that views me as the face of evil. So I have to deal with this. But in dealing with it you have to understand that Black is beautiful and you can’t let that hyperbole get in the way of how you see the world,” he said.
While he’s not teaching in a classroom anymore, it’s clear that Younge still sees himself as an educator.
“When people start learning these concepts they can see the mechanizations that were put in place in order to ensnare Americans into believing that people of a darker hue are somewhat inferior,” he said.
“I think it’s perfect for the time. We don’t really have anything that’s musically challenging that’s educating people right now,” Oden said of the album.
The podcast and short film round out Younge’s lesson plan for the project.
The podcast “Invisible Blackness With Adrian Younge” includes conversations with guests such as Public Enemy frontman Chuck D, Digable Planets’ Ladybug Mecca, jazz musician Keyon Harrold and actor Michael Jai White.
“TAN” is a short “Twilight Zone”-style film that tells the story of five people in purgatory as they deal with issues regarding bigotry in America, Younge said.
“These are companion pieces that when you watch the film and you listen to the podcast and you listen to the album, you’re going through a full course of what it means to be Black in America,” he said.