by Miguel Cullen of www.stateofthearts.org.uk

For those who don’t know, Mayer Hawthorne is a new soul artist on Stone’s Throw records, the label that puts out Madvillain, Breakestra and J Dilla. His sound is almost inseparable to that of Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes, and his look is a sort of Mark Ronson, slightly geeky in skinny ties/cardigans.
He’s a massive hit among discerning heads in the scene, with his Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out single heading six-figure hits on YouTube and his Maybe So, Maybe No Venice Beach-shot music video getting him a front page interview spot on cult NY mag Beyond Race.

Funny cause this artist’s popularity is all about race. Check Christian Lander’s blog Stuff White People Like, that depicts the labyrinth of cultural faux pas -

[Banksy sample - "Here’s how it works: if you say your favorite artist is Van Gogh/Monet, you will appear as though your taste in art is derived entirely from college posters. This is unacceptable. Conversely, if you list Damien Hirst/Basquiat, you’ll look like you are trying too hard but don’t really know what you are talking about. Chances are that white people will assume your art education consists entirely of documentaries, bio pics, and looking up references from Gossip Girl on Wikipedia. Finally, if you list your favorite artist as a current, bleeding edge visionary who white people have not heard of, they will immediately recognize you as a threat and dislike you. It is also a certainty that they will call you pretentious behind your back. Needless to say, it’s complicated. But Banksy is just right]

that the self-conscious middle class whitey [let's call him whitey] must navigate to arrive at the unwittingly homogenized lebensraum (sorry) where he will always end up.

Mayer is a posterboy for whitey’s tortured values. He represents a kind of tragic man for all seasons who is defined tactically, not from the heart, with these kinds of whitey hang-ups in mind. As mentioned, his music is very derivative of Mayfield/Gaye/Hayes [bar a certain richness of voice - even more noticeable in falsetto - that being a whitey he can't approach] while the same time being all sensitive side-partings and Joe 90 specs. Add that to also digging skateboarding and getting props from black guys in passing cars [Maybe So, Maybe No video] and it all starts giving me a toothache.

Yep, in turns out Mayer Hawthorne’s sound was initially “a joke” [Mayer Hawthorne] that ended up catching Stone’s Throw’s attention. His sound before that was hip hop, his first love heavy metal. It’s unsurprising, really that Stone’s Throw felt to sign him, considering the major talent on their roster -- Madvillain -- is essentially hip hop for white people.

Because let’s face it: black music that hasn’t been put through the white filter, like Isaac Hayes, or indeed rapper Papoose, just ain’t cool with us. The very reason that white people are down with MH and Bob Marley [check Lloyd Bradley's Bass Culture] is because they are conditioned to suit delicate white middle-class palates

In the final pages of Don Letts’ autobiography, the dread punk [difficult to imagine a more rebellious man] wrote “There used to be an element of manipulation on the part of the record companies and the media, but nowadays it seems like there’s a strange complicity. When I was starting out, music was an anti-establishment thing. Now people get into music to want to be part of the establishment. How radical can you get if you want what the man’s offering?”

The aim of an artist should be to break, to destroy, to cast icons to the floor; and with Mayer Hawthorne’s curious forgery, we all get more banal.