I think the artist in his way is to seek; as if on a journey, going from strength to strength, towards the ‘original’ ’. As C.S. Lewis once said it,

'No man who bothers about originality will ever be original:
whereas if you simply try to tell the truth, you will nine times
out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.'

I mean by ‘original’ and ‘new’ a work which is ‘differently new’. The ability to join together things, or in my case music, which may not necessarily and previously been married together. There is nothing purely original. Originality consists in part on making a person ‘see’ the familiar anew. If an artist can achieve this, he deserves praise of the highest order. When C.S. Lewis talks of telling the truth, there is a sense that it is a truth based from how, he – the artist, god of his work, sees the world. The truth as he sees it, not as he should do. As the martial artist Bruce Lee once expressed, there is a need the artist has to ‘express himself’. This is what I try to achieve in my work, and particularly, with this new project. Marvin’s music gave me the inspiration needed to say what I felt I could say in this particular context.

Unlike other talented artists who have skilfully sampled Marvin’s music into Hip-hop, I decided I was going to approach it slightly differently. I have kept Marvin’s original music. I made the decision also to keep as best as I could to the moods, themes, and direction of the original songs and recordings. I included Marvin’s vocals, too. He is very much a presence on this project. I selected the music from I think, three –three of Marvin’s albums. They included Trouble Man (1972), What’s Going On (1971), and I Want You (1976). It took a while making the selection. A lot of time was spent going through a lot of Marvin’s recordings, nearly all his albums. The tracks which made the final project were ones I felt best suited this fusion of Hip-hop (lyrics, and by which I mean my particular style of writing) and Soul.


Mico