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’d gone to movies with my mother," DeVaughn says of the moment news of Marvin Gaye's being shot dead by his father 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 Fool’s.'"
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 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 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 now 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."
The song 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."
That work extends beyond the music. DeVaughn has long been an advocate for various social causes, especially through the work of his Love Life Foundation.
"I feel I'm being of service to the universe through my gift, not only through words and melody but as a community activist," the Maryland, US-raised singer says, "as someone who's started a foundation in
