In honor of Black Music Month 2021, DJ Spinna has created a special mix. Below, he shares his thoughts on Black music and how its rich legacy comes alive in his work. “Black music represents life. No matter what genre you're into, there's always that underlying thing—that common denominator, the pulse that resonates through the soul of humankind all over the world. You could be into rock 'n' roll. You could be into jazz. You could be into hip-hop. You could be into electronic music and pop. The pillar from which all of these things were built is Black music. It's the reason why, today, we can celebrate so many iconic recordings that may have come out 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago and still regard them as timeless masterpieces. The music echoes the sentiments of the artists, and the artists represented the people and the sign of the times. Take James Brown, for example—with all that heavy funk that he gave us in the late '60s and early '70s, that energy and that aggression represented struggle. It represented pain. Now for certain, a lot of those jams are great party records and you can get down to them, and it made you feel real good, but it was a direct reflection of what was happening in those times. And it's easy to take that connectivity and apply it to hip-hop because the struggle continues. So when you hear a song like 'The Grunt' by The J.B.'s and you also hear that sample in Public Enemy's 'Rebel Without a Pause,' you realize that the narrative continues. It regenerates itself. That's the power of Black music. “Black music represents unity. It's the reason why so many people can gather under one roof from all walks of life all over the world—may not even speak the same language—and listen to the same thing, and it all reverberates in the same way from that rhythm that we hear in Black music. No matter what genre you're into, music wouldn't exist the way we know it today if it weren't for that drum. Black music is a force to be reckoned with on the entire planet. Mama Africa, thank you very much.”