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The Negro Problem
Biography
Invariably, first one must discuss the matter of the name. The name the Negro Problem is meant ironically, but it's in no way used for simple shock value. Indeed, the name illuminates the entire raison d'être of the band: although artists as disparate as Jimi Hendrix, Love, the Chambers Brothers, and the Fifth Dimension were making psychedelic rock music in the late '60s, a disturbing racial divide has reasserted itself since then. The concept of a supposed stylistic division into "white music" and "black music," a holdover from the first half of the 20th century when records by black artists were shunted over into the "race music" category, has insidiously grown back since the genre-busting, polyglot days of the immediate post-Civil Rights era, into an even stronger and more invisible divide. Once in a blue moon, a Prince or a Lenny Kravitz might gain a foothold in the rock marketplace, but more often, a genre-busting artist like Chocolate Genius or Shuggie Otis remains firmly locked, in the industry view, in the euphemistically-named "urban" marketplace. This is why singer/songwriter Mark Stewart's band is called the Negro Problem, and it's why that is such a brilliant name: how else will the music industry see an otherwise white band fronted by a black man whose primary influences include not only Sly Stone and George Clinton, but also Jimmy Webb, Stephen Sondheim, Burt Bacharach, Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson, and Paul McCartney, except as a problem?

Stewart, who goes by the name Stew (at least partially to differentiate himself from the British-born former singer for the Pop Group and New Age Steppers), fills his lyrics with that sort of bracing, ironic wit, and his tunes mix soulful vocals, the muscularity of hard rock and the unabashed prettiness of his beloved Webb (the group did a surprisingly rocking cover of Richard Harris' "MacArthur Park" on an early single, and Stew counts Webb protégés the 5th Dimension among his all-time favorites) into a trippy but accessible brand of psych-influenced power pop.
Selected Discography
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