Robin Thicke: Pretty Fly for a White Guy

Says Dyana Kass, director of marketing at Interscope (Thicke's label): "D.C. was very accepting of a white boy singing soul music. There were signs early on there that Robin was resonating with urban females. And when we looked at what was happening in D.C., we went: 'Okay, this is possible. We can make something happen with that community.' "

The son of former sitcom star Alan Thicke (Dr. Jason Seaver on "Growing Pains") and actress-singer Gloria Loring became the fastest-rising and, perhaps, most unlikely R&B star of 2007. (Alan Thicke is Canadian! Can't get any whiter than that.)

"It's hard to sing good soul music," says Danyel Smith, editor in chief of Vibe magazine. "There's a lot of black people doing it, and Robin Thicke is a white guy doing it. . . . I guess I don't attach that much significance to it when I listen to a great song like 'Magic.' What he's doing is just accepted. That's what I like about him: He's authentic. You can tell he's singing with his whole soul, which is the definition of R&B music. That's what everybody's responding to. To me, Robin's race is secondary."

Except for when it's not. In an interview with Billboard this summer, Thicke bellyached that his skin color had kept him from getting onto the cover of Vibe's October issue, which instead features the naked black singer Ciara, whose last album was outsold by Thicke's. He told Billboard that he was disappointed but that he respected the magazine's prerogative to feature people of color almost exclusively on its covers.

Says Smith, the Vibe editor: "All the best soul singers and hip-hop artists and pop singers are candidates for covers of Vibe magazine. . . . And we're hoping that one day Robin Thicke does see his Vibe cover."

Says Thicke: Oops.

"I feel so stupid about it," he says. "I didn't mean for it to be an issue. Vibe has always supported me; these are friends, not enemies. What I said was out of love for the magazine: I really want to be on the Vibe cover. But Vibe never said anything about not putting me on the cover because of the color of my skin.

"What happened was, I'd been telling my friends that I want the cover. And my boys said, 'I don't think I've ever seen a white person on the cover.' The [Billboard] writer and I were just talking about race and how doors get closed sometimes. They've been closed for 400 [expletive] years. Every day in our culture, people don't get jobs just because they're black. My wife [Paula Patton], being a black actress, doesn't get the opportunities that somebody with her talent should, simply based on the color of her skin. There's Democrats who won't vote for Obama just because he's black. There are 100 magazines that won't have African Americans in them.

"Let's focus on those problems, not Robin Thicke's I-can't-get-on-the-cover-of-Vibe problem. My 'Vibe problem' isn't really the problem. I'm not the victim."

But, he adds: "The fact is, there are some magazines that I'm not in at all that the people who bought my last album read."

Like . . . what? Jet? Ebony?

"I've learned -- there will be no more names!" Thicke says.