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Don’t Expect ‘Leave the Door Open’ to Save Black Music
Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak’s first Silk Sonic single is a dope soul throwback, but it’s not a savior
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
Earlier this month, power duo Silk Sonic — a collaboration between Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak — dropped its first single, “Leave the Door Open.” Produced by Mars and D’Mile (written by Mars, .Paak, D’Mile, and Brody Brown), it is, I suppose, a hit. It is everywhere. Given how the music industry has moved the goalposts to count streams as a portion of sales, if it isn’t a hit, nothing is.
And, because the song taps into historical Black musical forms and Mars is attached to it, we all have to have an argument about it.
Part of what’s interesting about the criticism of this song is that if Mars wasn’t involved, the chances that anybody lobbing accusations of style-glomming would be next to none. Mars unfortunately drags the albatross of appropriation with him wherever he goes, which is frustrating here because the song is legit. I’m not a Mars fan, and where I believe he’s derivative, I say so. “Uptown Funk,” his 2014 riff on 1980s funk, was truly boring to me, and all comparisons to Prince were…
