(photo credit: Musiq Instagram)
His name says it all: Musiq Soulchild. The now multi-platinum 44-year-old soul singer has given us hit after hit including “Love”, “Half Crazy”, “So Beautiful” and “Just Friends (Sunny)”. His signature Philly sound resonated with fans all over making him a household name in the early 2000’s.
Musiq explain where his stage name came from: “There were people who knew of me but they didn’t really know me; they just knew me as ‘that music dude.’ So after getting that so much, I was like ‘Just call me Musiq.’ The stage name “Musiq Soulchild” is techinally two ideas. ‘Musiq’ is the front man and ‘Soulchild’ is the idea behind it. It’s basically me as an artist in this generation, representing the traditions and the legacies of the past soul stars.”
Musiq has been known to write songs that get to the heart of the issue. There really is no fluff, he just sings about what he knows and people have been rocking to his brand of music for years.
“As an artist you start to realize that a lot of our material comes from the challenges,” explain Musiq. “So, even when you’re going through hell, it’s still a win because you’ve got content to talk about. It’s just not fun when you’re going through it. You’re humanity kicks in and you kick and complain when you’re going through, but when you come up for air, you can be like ah that’s why I went through that. Got it.”
Besides his music inspiration, the only other thing that Musiq gets more questions about is his eye. He wears dark shades for every appearance and interview not because of a “Hollywood” persona, he has what some call a “wandering eye.” Ever since he began his career, Musiq has been wearing sunglasses as a way to cover up what was deemed as his lazy eye. But Musiq revealed what really happened:
“When I was mad young, my uncle was trying to feed me and I was mad rebellious, I wanted to feed myself and he was like nah, and he was trying take the fork away from me. So he was feeding me and I wouldn’t let go because I was rebellious and wanted to feed myself, so his hand slipped and jerked back into my eye.
“I started crying and my mom came in and asked ‘what’s going on?’ and I guess my uncle was in shock. He was like ‘I don’t know what to say’ and she took me, cleaned me up, and put me down, but I was still crying and she was like…
… ‘what’s wrong?’ She looked at my eyes and took me to the hospital. That’s where the doctors patched me up and my eye was never the same after that.”
His eye reacts as if it has exotropia. Exotropia is where the eyes are deviated outward. There are six muscles that control eye movement, four that move the eye up and down and two that move it side to side. All these muscles must be coordinated and working properly in order for the brain to see a single image.
When both eyes are properly aligned and aimed at the same target, the visual portion of the brain fuses the forms into a single image. When one eye turns inward, outward, upward, or downward, two different pictures are sent to the brain. This causes loss of depth perception and binocular vision.
“I can only just be grateful for everything, for all of the experiences, good or otherwise,” says Musiq. “It is what it is. Life makes you who you are. You make the best of it. You learn from it. It teaches you a lot about yourself when you learn how other people perceive you, how other people form all of these interesting opinions about you. Especially the ones that don’t know you, those are the ones that are really, really interesting. Hilarious, actually.”
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