His name says it all: Musiq Soulchild. The now multi-platinum 44-year-old soul singer has given us hit after hit including “Love”, “Half Crazy”, “So Beautiful” and “Just Friends (Sunny)”. His signature Philly sound resonated with fans all over making him a household name in the early 2000’s.
Musiq explain where his stage name came from: “There were people who knew of me but they didn’t really know me; they just knew me as ‘that music dude.’ So after getting that so much, I was like ‘Just call me Musiq.’ The stage name “Musiq Soulchild” is techinally two ideas. ‘Musiq’ is the front man and ‘Soulchild’ is the idea behind it. It’s basically me as an artist in this generation, representing the traditions and the legacies of the past soul stars.”
Musiq has been known to write songs that get to the heart of the issue. There really is no fluff, he just sings about what he knows and people have been rocking to his brand of music for years.
“As an artist you start to realize that a lot of our material comes from the challenges,” explain Musiq. “So, even when you’re going through hell, it’s still a win because you’ve got content to talk about. It’s just not fun when you’re going through it. You’re humanity kicks in and you kick and complain when you’re going through, but when you come up for air, you can be like ah that’s why I went through that. Got it.”
Besides his music inspiration, the only other thing that Musiq gets more questions about is his eye. He wears dark shades for every appearance and interview not because of a “Hollywood” persona, he has what some call a “wandering eye.” Ever since he began his career, Musiq has been wearing sunglasses as a way to cover up what was deemed as his lazy eye. But Musiq revealed what really happened:
“When I was mad young, my uncle was trying to feed me and I was mad rebellious, I wanted to feed myself and he was like nah, and he was trying take the fork away from me. So he was feeding me and I wouldn’t let go because I was rebellious and wanted to feed myself, so his hand slipped and jerked back into my eye.
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“I started crying and my mom came in and asked ‘what’s going on?’ and I guess my uncle was in shock. He was like ‘I don’t know what to say’ and she took me, cleaned me up, and put me down, but I was still crying and she was like…