| Black Music | |
| Type: | Studio |
| Artist: | Chocolate Genius |
| Cover: | Black Music (Chocolate Genius album).jpg |
| Released: | July 14, 1998 |
| Genre: | R&B |
| Label: | V2 |
| Next Title: | GodMusic |
| Next Year: | 2001 |
Black Music is the first album by Chocolate Genius. It was released on V2 Records on July 14, 1998.
Track 5, "My Mom", is about a return visit to his childhood home and the mother he was losing to senility ("My mom, my sweet mom/She don't remember my name.").
Just prior to recording Black Music, Chocolate Genius had finished reading The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell.[1] In an email interview with Cleveland Scene, Chocolate Genius explained the meaning of the album's title: "As long as my skin is this color, race will be an unavoidable and hindering label for people that are stuck in that archaic mindset. Of course, I take a special pride in the achievements of people that look like me, but I am foremost a citizen of the planet. Calling the first record Black Music was my way of challenging the people who have to file, sell, and categorize music by genre."[2]
Spin called it "a relentlessly somber, wryly confessional avant-folk-funk rebuttal to popular notions of what constituted African-American pop."[3] Many other critics have also highlighted the album's morose and starkly autobiographical sound.