Robin Thicke: Pretty Fly for a White Guy

R&B star Robin Thicke is backstage at Nissan Pavilion, wearing dark blue jeans, a short-sleeve black shirt and, of course, white skin -- which should go without saying, except that people often assume he's black when they hear his soulful singing. (He's always gotten that. Always considered it high praise, too.)

Four hours before a performance on the undercard of Mary J. Blige's Love Soul Tour, Thicke is sitting in the dining room, at a table with 13 types of hot sauce on it, sipping tea and talking about race -- about being a 31-year-old "white guy who looks like a white guy" (right down to the blue eyes) but who sings black music to majority-black audiences.

If he's bored with this aspect of his story, he's certainly not showing it. In fact, Thicke is actively promoting it while pushing his new album, the appropriately titled "Something Else," which will be released Tuesday.

"I'm not a white guy who sells endless amounts of records to white people," he says. "Eighty or 90 percent of my fans are African Americans, mostly grown black women. That's who's at my shows, who's buying my music, who's listening to me on the radio. I think that's pretty interesting."

Let others ignore the elephant in the room. Robin Thicke prefers to parade it around!

Theoretically, in 2008 America, where a black man running as a "post-racial" candidate is thisclose to becoming president and a black singer (Darius Rucker) is suddenly sitting atop the country-music charts, the color of Robin Thicke's skin should be a nonstarter, shouldn't it?

But this is still a decidedly race-conscious society. And Thicke is a fascinating case, having transcended race in a quantifiably unprecedented way: His signature single, "Lost Without U," topped Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for 11 weeks last year, making it the most successful song by a white artist since Billboard relaunched the chart in 1965. It is also the longest-running R&B hit of the past two years, spending more weeks at No. 1 than anything by Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, Usher or anyone else.

Singing of love and rapture in a sweet if frail falsetto, Thicke became the first white performer to reach the top R&B slot since British songstress Lisa Stansfield did it in 1992. (Not even Justin or Eminem could get there.) He's sold about 1.5 million copies of his last album, 2006's "The Evolution of Robin Thicke."

"I still haven't really been played on pop radio, not like R&B," says Thicke. And sure enough, though "Magic" -- the uplifting and upbeat first single from "Something Else" -- is in the Top 10 of Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, it has barely registered on the Billboard Hot 100.

Washington was Thicke's breakthrough market two years ago, when "The Evolution of Robin Thicke" received early support from black-oriented radio stations here -- most notably WPGC-FM, which helped to break "Lost Without U" nationally.

"I've heard white guys with soulful voices before, but Robin Thicke is like the one who's been given the card," says Donnie Simpson, host of WPGC's popular morning show. "Our women really dig him; they want to go to bed with him. And for most of the brothers, it seems like we're okay with that! We think he's cool; that is definitely different."

He adds: "I'm guess I'm one of them Stevie Wonder kinda guys: We're all one. And when I see it on display like that, when I see people so accepting of someone from the other side of the tracks, it warms my heart, man."