Search - Marlon Saunders :: Enter My Mind

Crooning over a back-in-the-day riff reminiscent of 70s soul, there's nothing "neo" about Marlon Saunders. Blending the intense devotion to groove that made 70s r&b so great with a modern edginess steeped in the powerful spoken word dazzle of hip hop, Saunders recreates a movement without sounding like a knock-off sampler. Which is exactly what he had in mind. "I want to combine the richness of the 70?s - all of it, the music and psyche of black folks, the sense of beauty and awareness - and incorporate that into what I find unique and special about today?s music," he says. And the emphasis, like his idols Marvin and Stevie and Rufus, will be songwriting. "In r&b music, we need to go back to the basic songwriting," says Saunders. "I was listening to a Roberta Flack/Donny Hathaway record the other day and I was amazed at the beauty of it. It?s simple recording in terms of instrumentation, but those sturdy, beautiful songs transcend everything. You can do anything to that music - bop to it, make love to it, hang out with your friends to it, cook a good meal to it. I want my music to have the same effect. Or like the way Curtis Mayfield could marry the groove with the spiritual concept to the lyrics and still keep it ambiguous. I want my music to have that sense of discovery."