Art & Creativity Quote by Smokey Robinson

Smokey Robinson’s line is a neat piece of Motown-era jujitsu: it insists on universality while quietly indicting the system that made “black music” a segregated shelf in the first place. On the surface, it’s a straightforward creative mission statement - write great songs, reach everyone. Underneath, it’s a survival strategy in an industry that routinely treated Black artistry as a niche product, no matter how much it shaped the mainstream.

The phrasing matters. “We did not set out” frames racial labeling as something applied after the fact, by gatekeepers and markets, not by the makers. Then he swaps the category (“black music”) for a value claim (“quality music”), a move that reads like optimism but also like a tactical rebuttal. If the market insists Blackness equals limitation, Robinson counters with a standard no one can publicly argue against: quality. It’s a way to demand access to pop radio, TV slots, and broader touring circuits without begging.

Placed in the context of the 1960s and 70s - crossover charts, “race records” hangovers, the politics of respectability, the civil rights backdrop - the quote reveals Motown’s double bind. To cross over, you had to sound “for everybody,” yet your authorship and body still got read through race. Robinson’s genius is how he makes that tension sound like confidence. It’s not colorblindness so much as a claim to ownership: we’re not a subgenre; we’re the center, and the proof is the song.