The Day the Sun Turned Blue

Rapper and former one-half of the southern rap super duo Outkast, Andre’ 3000, released a flute album today (November 17, 2023) called “New Blue Sun”.  Let that sink in.   

Andre' 3000 of Billboard Hot One Hundred “Hey Ya” hit single fame made an album without any words.  I mention this because I have not had the inspiration to write for several weeks.  Call it writer's block or I could excuse myself for having been busy helping my eighty-year-old Mother in Kansas City for the past several weeks.  I listened to the album on my walk this morning along San Diego’s waterfront.  It was not Andre's work or the fresh salt air and azure blue Southern California skies that inspired me.  No, it was a few hours later in my local barber shop that I rediscovered my mojo.

My San Diego barber shop is called Freshly Faded.  It is a Black-owned barber shop patronized by a multi-cultural and multi-gendered client base and it includes several non-Black barbers amongst its Black majority of barbers.  You are as likely to see a white guy walk in as you are Black, Asian, or Latino. 

What I love about Freshly Faded is no different from the very first barbershop my father took me to in first grade.  It was in an older dilapidated inner city neighborhood south of Chicago called Chicago Heights.  I recall being intrigued by those trips visiting the predominantly Black Chicago neighborhood surrounded by black smoke-belching factories and the roads were criss-crossed with bumpy railroad crossings everywhere. We lived in a predominantly white suburban neighborhood nearby and the trip to the barber shop allowed me my first brushes with Black culture outside my immediate family.  There was an essence to it from the barber skillfully balancing an ash-heavy cigar in his mouth and over my head while trying to cut my hair to the smells of food and laughter that filled the barbershop space.  It’s a feeling that I have always wanted to bottle up and save for forever consumption.

Black barber shops have always been a “safe haven” for Blacks.  A place we can call our own and be ourselves without feeling in danger of indictment or judgment from the broader population.  In the case of Freshly Faded and many other Black barbers, I have patronized over the years, everyone is welcome, and I assume given unwritten rules that they come with open minds and open hearts to the culture.  

The "essence" I wanted to bottle up was beyond hearing what was playing over the speakers in the shop.  Music is fundamental to the Black barbershop.  It sets the tone.  When I lived in the Cincinnati suburb of Glendale, Ohio, my Black barber shop was a solopreneur operation within walking distance of my home.  “Simply Allen” was housed in a separate space within a larger white-owned beauty shop.  Allen the owner had a Bose system that filled the well-appointed space with the best vibes from cool jazz to Christian Hip Hop.  I always felt like I was escaping the doldrums of life the minute I crossed the threshold into Allen’s shop.  My blood pressure would drop and my nerves would ease.  Allen had a saying and he even had it written on a chalkboard in the shop:  “School is in session”.  This also set the tone for deep conversations within his shop's four walls.  I always felt like we were on the cusp of solving the world’s worst problems as everyone who entered became a part of a respectable broader conversation about the world around us that we were temporarily walled off from.

The Freshly Faded tone today was yet another layer of cultural excellence.   The barbers were playing amongst other music artists, you guessed it: Andre’ 3000’s “New Blue Sun”.  The tone was set.  I immediately felt like I had entered the multiverse.

Oxford Languages defines “multiverse” as an “infinite realm of being or potential being of which the universe is regarded as a part or instance”.  Marvel Entertainment also has its multiverse.  The idea is that we are living in one of what could be many universes where there are as many similarities as there are differences including different versions of our present selves.  Multiverses are dope.

Today, Freshly Faded felt like the multiverse as we listened to “New Blue Sun” and the whole shop joined in and laughed and joked about a range of subjects from “Snoop Dogg announced he is quitting smoking” to “asteroids and solar storms could knock out the internet for a week” (proven untrue by NASA) to Jack in the Box now sells Chicken Wings (one barber said, “well at least they are probably better than Burger King”).  When the shop convo turned closer to home in terms of asking the question, “What would you rather have Pumpkin Pie or Sweet Potato Pie”, one barber, D.B. chimed, “I would rather have a whupping”.  Everyone laughed and D.B. added, “That would be a great comedy album title, you know as in the thing you always wanted to tell your parents but did not have the guts to”.  Minutes later this became the punchline chorus to several other people’s commentary as in, when the shop conversation turned to favorite desserts and someone asked, “Jay you don’t like chocolate cake?”  The reply was instant, “I would rather have a whupping”!  The shop laughed.  It’s this type of improvisation that sticks and makes the essence of Black barber shops so strong.

The essence of Black barbershop conversation moves across a diverse range of subjects and is more than just talking sports, even though there was a customer standing in the middle of the shop when I walked in, talking boxing and one of the barbers proceeded to demonstrate some of one particular boxer’s ‘moves’ by throwing a jab with his right and guarding his left arm.  I half-joked with the group before I left that they were going to have to create a daily reading list given everything I learned when coming into the shop.  Last month I left the shop and could not wait to research more about the talk of the so-called “alien” unveiling in Mexico City.

Today’s multiversal thinking made me relate to what has been going on in the past few weeks with marketing and technology.  We witnessed some excellent keynotes from the likes of OpenAI and Microsoft.  One can’t help but think how technology continues to permeate our lives and if we will at some point reach a point of diminishing returns or if technology will simply eat us whole.  What I felt today in the barbershop was the opposite.  It was a low-tech reminder that everything is going to be all right given we can allow the tech to have its supporting role (the music) and we continue to shine our beacons of human-driven light to each other in a way that is higher, more personal and closer than anything that social media or AI could ever give us.  If you are ever in San Diego’s North Park area, stop by Freshly Faded (freshlyfaded.com).  Oh, yeah, they can cut hair too!  You won’t be disappointed.