Leadership Quote by Solomon Burke

Burke is talking about power, not talent. The “financial structure” list reads like a backstage roll call, and that’s the point: the music business sells the myth of raw genius while quietly running on paperwork, gatekeepers, and leverage. By naming attorneys, managers, and accountants, he’s puncturing the romantic narrative of soul as pure feeling. He’s also admitting, without self-pity, how easy it is to be outmaneuvered when you’re the product but don’t control the contract.

The most charged phrase is “going against the grain.” Burke isn’t describing a quirky artistic choice; he’s describing a system with expectations for Black entertainers that extend beyond sound. The subtext is respectability versus caricature, ownership versus access, self-determination versus gratitude. “What black entertainers is supposed to do” carries the weight of a whole industry’s preferred script: be brilliant, be pliable, be profitable, don’t ask for the infrastructure that turns performance into generational wealth.

Context matters because Burke came up in an era when Black musicians were routinely underpaid, mis-credited, and locked into predatory deals, even as their innovations powered pop culture. His intent feels twofold: a warning to younger artists about the unglamorous mechanics of survival, and an indictment of a business that treats professional protection as an optional luxury rather than the baseline. The line lands because it’s plainspoken but lethal: the “grain” isn’t nature, it’s design.