Interview with R&B Artist Donnie

When Donnie sings, people listen. When he speaks, listeners take heed. Even the exhale of his raw voice chews the fat off of the injustice in our system. One might think Donnie’s heavy roots in the church would drub the openly gay artist’s spirits. After all, three of his four brothers and both his parents are preachers. Yet, he’s stayed focused on being himself and speaking what he feels.

I sat down with Donnie to talk about his religious upbringing, his sexuality and his socially conscious music. At first chat, I too easily discounted his passion as anger, failing to realize that his words were not much unlike my own. His concern for our world and fatigue with its injustices manifests through emotional song. Both Donnie and I are tired. We’re ready to see something different in the daily news. We’re ready for change. Here are our words:

Ramon: Your latest album, The Daily News, is all about the perils of daily life. Describe a typical day in your life.

Donnie: A typical day is getting up and looking at the world and being tired of it; trying to make sense out of my own life; and doing the things that I need to do to make it through. That’s how it is for me. When I look at the news I see a lot of despair. I can’t take people dying everyday. I cried after Katrina; after the Tsunami I cried. I cried after 9/11. And that’s why I do the music that I do.


The events of life have a heavy affect on you.

I’m sensitive, so I kind of get tired of it.

Does being sensitive help or hinder your music?

It hinders me and helps my music. Sometimes being sensitive helps me in ways that I really cant explain.

After the 2002 release of The Colored Section you talked about the bridges you burned and not being able to handle the fame that came along with the album. What was going on in your life back then?

I was in my 20’s, trying to undo and redefine my life. I wasn’t ready to do all of that and I wasn’t confident in myself. I was a wreck mentally.

Do you attribute certain incidents to your state of mind back then?

I grew up fanatically religious. There were some questions that never got answered. The why’s and when’s were never answered. You can’t deny it when somebody powerful comes up to you and tells you what you did yesterday and what God is going to do to you if you don’t stop. That kind of stuff happened, but a lot of times I had to realize that people use their gifts to elevate themselves. You can be a prophet and use it for your own good or your own evil. I’m not saying that’s all that came from my church, which is mostly all my family.

Speaking of religion, many of the issues gay people face today stem from religious zealots who consider homosexuality to be a sin. They don’t leave much room for interpretation. Has that affected your journey coming out?

Of course, I come from a Hebrew Pentecostal church, so we’re set apart even from Pentecostals. In the Pentecostal faith, homosexuality is an abomination. It affected my decision to come out, but my happiness meant more than all of that. We’re all just who we are. I’m going to be me.

Both of your parents are pastors. How was life growing up in the church, knowing you were gay?

There’s a bishop I know. When I first met him he was talking to my mother and all of a sudden I realized he was like me—he’s gay. All of sudden a couple of years later he started acting more masculine and I thought, how can he change just like that? What I’m saying is you start to do what they tell you to do. If being feminine makes [the church] uncomfortable, you start acting masculine. He let everybody who was gay see who he really was, but he put the mask on when he got to church. How can you ever be happy? Somebody else is telling you how soft you can be; how hard you can be. And I look at them and say, worry about your own life; prune your own tree.

Because the church is male dominated, all of the “acts of sin” that “heterosexual men” do are excused. There is a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, especially in the black church. It’s not going to work.

Should gay people abandon the pews in faiths that condemn homosexuality?

When Jesus came, he hung out with whores, gay people and all kinds of “sinners.” He healed sinners to show them love. So, I just look at the church and say they are hypocrites because they preach in “the name of Jesus,” but they don’t celebrate what Christ came here to do. So, I have a suggestion to the church, read the Bible and then read the Jesus story, then act like him.

Do you still go to church down where you live in Atlanta?

Yeah, I go to church. I’ve been in Atlanta for 25 years. My parents didn’t become pastors until the mid nineties. The church I go to now is accepting to gay people, to drag queens to homeless people. I am religious, but I look at it in a different way. How can you say you hate me who you’ve seen, but then say you love Christ, whom you’ve never seen?

Did your relationship with your parents change when you came out?

No, because I really didn’t come out; I just made it known even more. I’ve always been out. I’ve didn’t believe that I owed anybody anything, but my mind changed. I came out publicly in London at Jazz Café. As soon as I did my whole life changed. Coming out in front of people is different, but I never hid it from my parents. They knew I was gay before I knew I was gay.

Sometimes, I get tired of people asking me about being gay in my interviews, because they make that the only thing I am. I’m Black, I’m dark-skinned, I’m a Southerner. There are a lot of things about me.

Will you continue down the road of social advocacy with your music?

Most likely. People really don’t make a lot of music that talks about stuff. They are always talking about being in love; meanwhile we’re going down fast, as a friend of mine wrote in a song. People want to be entertained and not look at the problems.

What’s the solution?

If you don’t want to face the problems, at least laugh about them. But still face them! Women are being hurt; children are being abused. I just want us to get along. I’m tired of the classism and racism. I’m ready for something new.