International recording artist, Apropos has been featured on NBC’s The Voice, Complex, Entertainment Weekly, Elton John’s Rocket Hour, and more. He was born and raised in Detroit, the home of Motown Records.
Apropos is set to release several independent masterpieces this year and has been acclaimed by Sir Elton John and Kem. Kem describes him as “having that ‘thing’ that Marvin Gaye had.”
What influences are behind your new record “Spiritual Surgery?”
I love having the Motown sound and keeping that alive. I really wanted to add a little bit of rock. You hear a lot of soul mixed with rock. When you hear people like Charles Bradley, or even Sam Cooke, Muddy Water that’s soul with rock. As far as sonically and as far as the content, I was at a point in my career where things weren’t really going so well. I really feel that just as someone might need a medical procedure, I needed a medical procedure on my soul and my spirit. So, Dave Wilder, Steve Stone, and I came up with the theme of “Spiritual Surgery” and just crying out to a higher power, a god, in my case, the universal God and ask him for help. That’s how we came up with it.
Why is it important to keep Motown alive?
This is where [that music] was born. This is something that one Black man and a team of people that he entrusted created. We created Motown, a whole genre of music. When you hear classical, hip-hop, country, those are genres of music. Motown is a genre that was created by people who look like you and me. I feel like it’s my duty, I pledge to keep that alive. Thank God that I’ve kept it alive here in the city that it was born in.
You said you recorded your first album in London and in Blackpool, how did that experience influence your music?
It was definitely a surreal experience. Musically, though, it was a little frustrating, I didn’t really get to create as much as I thought that I was going to when I first started this deal with an independent label. So, it was a little chaotic. I did get to create a few songs 100 percent altogether. Most of the album was kind of a chaotic experience, but I definitely learned from it. Being over there and creating, even singing songs that were already written in a different country, was a cool part. There were a couple of songs that I wrote over there dreaming and thinking of Detroit.
