Bobby Womack will never leave Damon Albarn’s heart: “He feels very present”
Every year since Damon Albarn‘s Britpop domination, he has unveiled a new music influence that proves he was more than just a preppy rock star, made to rival Oasis.
Once the heady days of that rivalled musical era passed and Blur slowly drifted away from cultural relevancy, Albarn saw the shifting tides of his career as an opportunity. As the 1990s bled into the new millennium, he could scratch a more experimental itch and shift from indie rock safeness to the otherwise unfamiliar worlds of hip-hop.
With Gorillaz, Albarn began to prove his musical legacy and identify himself as a musical experimentalist. He explained, “One of the reasons I began Gorillaz is I had a lot of rhythms I never thought I could use with Blur. A lot of that stuff never really seemed to manifest itself in the music we made together as Blur.”
The anonymity, of course, helped that at the beginning, preventing fans from projecting limiting expectations onto Albarn. He could embrace the electric drum kit and keyboard presets that would have been laughed off in Britpop and, in turn, put him in rooms with the likes of Snoop Dogg, MF DOOM and De La Soul.
As surprising as this may have been to the general public, this was part of a much wider plan that started way back in his adolescence, where Albarn would soak up the records of soul icon Bobby Womack. His gritty and emotional vocal style has been at the bedrock of so much hip-hop, being sampled by the likes of Kanye West, Rick Ross, 50 Cent, and Kendrick Lamar, and so undoubtedly offered Albarn an insightful look into a genre he was desperate to experiment in.
But then in 2010, Albarn got to know Womack on a personal and artistic level, as he laid down vocals for a Gorillaz track ‘Stylo’, which inevitably ended in Albarn taking the production reins on his first record in 18 years, The Bravest Man In The Universe.
It was a pledge of faith for Albarn as the world musician he wanted to be, and opened a whole new door of production for him in the years that followed. But in the year that followed the release of his album, Womack sadly died after a battle with Alzheimer’s, leaving not just a gaping hole in Albarn’s creative career, but music as a whole.
“In a strange way, I find it very hard to sort of accept that he’s not there any more. For me, he feels very present, and I don’t quite understand why,” said Albarn. “He taught me things that will never leave me, and he will never leave me.”
That 2013 record must have sparked something in Womack, because just before his passing, reports were circulating that he was once again preparing to head into the studio, collaborating on tracks with Snoop Dogg and Stevie Wonder, but sadly, the world never got to hear those projects, and the Albarn-produced The Bravest Man In The Universe acted as the swan song of an iconic career.
