blacklieder - American Songwriter

R&B doesn't cover it. Hip Hop is not the genre that defines the attitude or the approach.  For Antonio Jacobs, it is about staying honest. Songwriters write about what they understand... what they can feel. blacklieder isn't only about romance, it is about the individual and about the human condition.

Striving to bring quality back into music, Antonio is very picky about his influences, choosing R&B singers primarily for their tone, and less about the content. Maxwell, Luther Vandross and Michael Jackson have that vocal purity blacklieder seeks to tap into. Reliable, clean and on key are very important details. The Nat 'King' Cole school of crooners. The singing is effortless & captivating producing a sound that grabs your attention and keeps it there.

Lyrically, the blacklieder sound is influenced by a wide variety of sources both old and new and in a wide range of subjects. Elvis Costello and Stevie Wonder are early influences, but Billy Joel and Lionel Richie are important door openers as well. Economics and philosophy weigh heavily in Antonio's writing, since the former has touches nearly everyone in a stark way, and the latter speaks to why we do anything at all.

Antonio loves working  in the studio, drawing upon the influence of his favorite producers - Teddy Riley, Quincy Jones, Kenneth 'Babyface' Edmonds, and is looking to branch out into the area of the true American songwriter, inspired by Film composers such as Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard.

blacklieder looks for a return to classic themes and storytelling in music on the level of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Organic singing on the level of the Righteous Brothers and Roy Orbison, and earnest tunes like Bill Withers and Jim Croce wrote. Antonio wants all this while embracing the technology and concepts of the 21st century, propelling the arts into a bold, new direction.