On Sunday night in Michigan, Mayer Hawthorne a.k.a. Haircut rocked a set for a packed house of folks with smiles on their faces. Hip-Hop ass dudes cheesing. Dusty-ass backpackers grinning ear to ear. Take-myself-so-seriously B-boys and B-girls doing the Twist. Moms, dads, grandmas, young and old, happy as hell. The Mayer himself wore an outfit that spoke to his reach, with a to-the-nines herringbone suit capped off with Crayola-tone Adidas.

And there I was, front and center, doing the Mashed Potato like my life depended on it. Like it was 1967. Like it was Hitsville, U.S.A. all over again. And all I could think of was Lamont Dozier.

“Everybody feels music. If you put together the right stuff, everybody will like it,” he told me.

Haircut and I went to see Mr. Dozier (of Holland Dozier Holland) speak at USC while I was still in grad school. I told Cut about the event and he went right to the crates for a rare copy of Love And Beauty for Lamont to sign. Haircut got his wish, we both got geek-giddy for a picture with our hero, and I finally asked the question I’d always wanted an answer to — “Why is it that Motown could make it outside the boarders of Michigan so easily, and now you have these great Hip-Hop artists in Detroit who can’t get their sound outside of The D?”

“It used to be back in the day that everything that came out of Detroit would go number one around the world,” he said. “[But Hip-Hop is] staying in one place. It’s not considering everybody. It’s geared for one set of people when it should be for everybody.”

He spoke with an understanding built on war-wounded, battle-battered, time-tested years in the industry. His words stuck to the inside of my ribs with more authority than a Thanksgiving dinner. They stood still and remained in the few empty spaces between my heart, lungs and spine. And I’ll never forget them because it’s the moment I realized Hip-Hop — the love of my life — was spinning its wheels on an ice slick.

Cold. Motionless.

He both broke my heart and rebuilt it with new possibilities in his answer. Music that considers everybody. A foreign concept, so it seemed. A theory long lost to my parents’ generation.

I’m not harping on Michigan Hip-Hop (nor Hip-Hop in general), because quite frankly it’s still my favorite music. But it’s not just in Detroit; it’s every rapper/producer in every region. Every regional act from Whozeewhatsitville, America is guilty of the sort of self-reflective stagnancy that’s doomed for failure (unless, of course, the End Game goal is only to achieve local recognition). The music just isn’t considering everybody, so it’s begging to remain irrelevant with higher hurdles and larger obstacles to get beyond.

I don’t know if that meeting with Lamont Dozier affected Haircut the same as it did me or if his answer to my question stuck to his ribs as seriously. But I do know that Haircut is making music that considers everybody.

Love it or hate it, Mayer Hawthorne is just that feel good music that makes you want to dance. He’s stocked with a live band with some of the sickest instrumentalists I’ve ever seen or heard. And I’ll be gosh darned if I wasn’t mashed-potato-ing the shit out of the front row the other night, twisting the night away and doing the swim — with grimy heads, dusty backpackers, dry-ass B-boys, moms, dads, little old grandmas, everybody. And I realized in that moment; in this day and age, ain’t nothing wrong with feeling good for a change.

Previously Posted — Mayer Hawthorne’s Fave Five | Mayer Hawthorne’s “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out” Video

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