Q&A: Thicke reflects on race, music and "Something Else"

By Gail Mitchell

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - It's an unusually hot and humid summer night in Hollywood. A murmuring line of fans -- mostly women -- snakes around the Sunset Boulevard perimeter of the House of Blues. They're waiting for one thing and one thing only: Robin Thicke.

Inside the crowded venue, women begin yelling as Thicke's band troops onstage to some James Brown funk and the announcer promises "a true soul experience." Then the whole room seems to undulate as Thicke bounds onstage and launches into his new '70s soul-grooved track "Magic."

That afternoon, in an upstairs dressing room, Thicke mused about the audiences that have been queuing up as he sets the stage for the September 30 release of his third album, "Something Else."

"What's great about the bigger cities are the numbers of interracial couples who come," he said. (The singer-songwriter, who is white, is married to actress Paula Patton, who is black.) Thicke added, "I'm seeing a cross between the girls who want to come out and have fun and the couples who come to enjoy a loving environment."

Race never seems to be far from the mind of Thicke, who was heralded for furthering the next generation of blue-eyed soul after the platinum success of his second album, "The Evolution of Robin Thicke."

He described "Something Else" as a cross between "classic Philly, Motown and '70s black disco meets the creativity of the Beatles and Bob Dylan. It just felt to me that a lot of stuff out there sounds the same. It's a time for change, for something else."

The new album (due September 30 on Star Trak/Interscope) isn't the only thing on Thicke's plate. He has written the theme song for the movie "Push," a drama directed by Lee Daniels (who produced "Monster's Ball" and "The Woodsman"). Co-starring Patton as a teacher, the film takes place in '80s Harlem amid the crack epidemic. Thicke is also penning a screenplay ("a spy thriller love thing like 'The Bourne Supremacy'") and writing a book of poetry.

He'll tour with Mary J. Blige in September and October. And his latest Lil Wayne collaboration, "Tie My Hands," will appear on "Something Else" (it's also on Wayne's "Tha Carter III") and will be featured in the upcoming Forest Whitaker film "Hurricane Season."

The welcome mat being rolled out now for Thicke is a far cry from the lukewarm reception he encountered in 2003 for his Nu America/Interscope album "A Beautiful World." Initially titled "Cherry Blue Skies," the R&B-vibed set gained some notice by way of lead single "When I Get You Alone," which sampled Walter Murphy's "A Fifth of Beethoven." But many inside and outside the industry didn't know what to make of the unshaven, long-haired artist going only by his last name. "I was just rebelling," Thicke recalls, "trying to do something different. I actually challenged myself, saying, 'I won't cut my hair until I hear my song on the radio.'"

Thicke heard plenty of his work on the radio -- but it was for other artists he'd penned songs for, like Christina Aguilera and Usher. (He won a Grammy Award for his collaboration on the latter's 2004 album "Confessions.") But the son of singer Gloria Loring and actor Alan Thicke ("Growing Pains") wouldn't hear his own singles on the radio until after he'd signed to the Neptunes' Interscope-distributed Star Trak label.

Thicke sat down with Billboard to discuss his career and how the "blue-eyed soul" label has come to chafe.

Q: What was your frame of mind while recording "Something Else?"

Robin Thicke: I don't walk in with a concept. I just write songs, and by the time I get to the end, I say, "OK, this is what the songs seem to be talking about as a whole opposed to individual moments."

These new songs are talking about a time for change and hope; to get away from all the sadness, loneliness and depression that I used to live in. This album expresses the celebration I'm going through and the healing I want to give to people. It's also about what's going on in the world with politics and race. The closer Barack Obama gets to the White House, it's all about race now. They're all trying to make it seem like he is playing the race card when he's just an American running for president. How my wife and I still aren't able to walk in Mississippi without people looking at us like we're crazy. The laws may have changed, but the whispering hasn't.

Q: What is the major difference between your first two albums?