Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins III – known by his stage name Aloe Blacc – is a man of many talents. As a musician, singer, songwriter and record producer, he’s worked on a wide variety of projects. He topped the UK charts with his singles I Need A Dollar and The Man, and wrote and performed vocals on Avicii’s Wake Me Up, which topped the charts in 22 countries, and has amassed almost 1,250,000,000 streams on Spotify. Alongside fellow US record producer Exile, Blacc also forms the hip hop duo Emanon.

Blacc’s initial musical passions, however, were very different. He admits to being raised on salsa, merengue, and cumbia, before falling in love with hip hop. He started writing rap before he turned ten years old, drawing inspiration from socially conscious artists such as KRS-One, and he released his first mixtape aged seventeen, before developing a love for folk singers and songwriters.

“One of the most important factors in my transition from hip hop to being a singer was listening to people like Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Kris Kristofferson, and Cat Stevens,” Blacc says on his official website. “Their songs are full of emotion that’s expressed in strong lyrics, and that had a big impact on me.”

Blacc dropped his debut album Shine Through in 2006, and it’s follow up Good Things in 2010, which contained I Need A Dollar, chosen as the theme song to HBO’s How To Make It In America. Working with the likes of Pharrell Williams, Blacc’s third album Lift Your Spirit debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 albums chart in 2014, and earned a Grammy Award nomination for best R&B album. His latest album, last year’s All Love Everything, contains his new single Other Side, which was released this week. 

The track begins with gentle piano, and builds into a rousing, emotional affair structured around it’s delicate melody, as Blacc sings “We’ve been to walls we couldn’t climb / And we chased the light that made us blind / But I know, we can walk this road / One step at a time”. 

Writing on his official Facebook page about the release, Blacc wrote: “Our intimate relationships are the most challenging and, at the same time, the most rewarding part of life. Other Side is a testimonial to making it through the tough patches in a relationship. If you just keep the promise of unconditional love and find a way to break through the issues, you can definitely ‘make it to the other side’.”

Watch the official lyrics video for Other Side here.

Find out more about Aloe Blacc on his official website.

Author: Joe Sharratt

Joe Sharratt is a writer and journalist based in the UK covering music, literature, sport, and travel.