“I’m sort of bound and determined to do it,” he says, half-jokingly. to work on them with producers Blake Mills and Tony Berg. In a few weeks, he’s planning to fly to L.A. Since he’s been holed up at home in Virginia, Hornsby has already written another album, including several songs inspired by the coronavirus. “Shit’s Crazy Out Here” is, he says, about the “Darwinian, dystopian world of summer AAUU basketball.” (“First time I’ve ever had a cuss word in the title - really pushing the envelope for old grandpa here,” he chuckles.) “I agree with that.” Non-Secure Connection tackles subject matter like drones, hackers, and civil rights. “The great Nina Simone said, ‘It’s an artist’s duty to reflect the times in which we live,’” he says. He briefly joined the Grateful Dead, worked with jazz players like Branford Marsalis and Pat Metheny, ventured into electronica, and wrote music for assorted Spike Lee projects. Instead, he has followed his own unpredictable muse for three decades. With “The Way It Is,” Hornsby seemed set for a career as a meditative singer-songwriter his collaborations with Don Henley (“The End of the Innocence”) and Bonnie Raitt (“I Can’t Make You Love Me”) bolstered his adult-pop cred.
BRUCE HORNSBY THE WAY IT IS FULL
The situation is the latest oddball turn in a career full of them.
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Not quite the “Funky Drummer” of piano, but close.
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Since then, “The Way It Is” has been sampled or re-recorded in nearly 20 hip-hop tracks by 2Pac, Snoop Dogg, Mase and, this year, Polo G (“Wishing for a Hero”). Nearly 35 years ago, Hornsby had an out-of-the-box hit with “ The Way It Is,” which combined an elegantly hooky piano with lyrics confronting racism (“They passed a law in ’64/To give those who ain’t got a little more/But it only goes so far/Because the law don’t change another’s mind”). Hornsby is joking, of course, but this summer has brought another reminder of the keyboardist-singer’s unexpected impact on the genre. “You’re going to have to make a plea for my inclusion!” “What’s the name of that fantastic Netflix series about hip-hop?” Bruce Hornsby asks.