Song: Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)
Artist: Marvin Gaye
Year: 1971
Released as the third and final single of Marvin Gaye’s breathtaking magnum opus What’s Going On, ‘Inner City Blues follows the template set by the album in discussing ghetto life in inner-city USA, insisting that the bleak economic situation made him want to holler and throw his hands up in the air.
Recommended by Matthew E. White in our interview, the song has been covered extensively by everyone from Etta James to Grover Washington, Jr. and sampled by the best hip hop artists – A Tribe Called Quest, Ice Cube and…Janet Jackson. What’s Going On cemented Gaye’s place as the finest soul singer of his generation, with ‘Inner City Blues’ the perfect example of his craft.
Conal Dougan
