In frontwheeldrive, an interview from February with the musician Mike Ladd.
frontwheeldrive: Tell me about Negrophilia. What were your aims with this record and how did it all come together?
Mike Ladd: The concept has been with me for a long time. I think in a way, all of my records have touched on this topic, especially when you are a Black artist doing stuff that doesn’t make the mainstream or is esoteric, and you have to contend with a large portion of your audience being white (especially when that wasn’t your primary intended audience). That said, when Patrine Archer Straw’s book came around, I had to read it, and it touched on at least some of the origins of the Negrophilia phenomenon. A phenomenon that has grown beyond Elvis and is as bizarre as Michael jackson, Eminem, and Condeleza Rice having tea and smoking stems in a drum circle in Norway.