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Parenting & Family Quote by Barry White

"We forget that this music, music made by my brothers and sisters, is still a baby. It's just beginning. When I think of the possibilities, it makes me smile"

About this Quote

Barry White frames soul and R&B not as a finished monument but as a newborn with its whole life ahead of it. The move is quietly radical: in an industry that loves to crown “golden ages” and sell nostalgia back to listeners, he insists the music is unfinished business. Calling it “a baby” shrinks the distance between past and future. It’s affectionate, protective, and also strategic - a way of arguing that the genre deserves patience, investment, and room to mutate without being treated as a trend that already peaked.

The line “made by my brothers and sisters” does more than signal camaraderie. It plants the music in Black collective labor, not individual genius, and it does so in the plainest language possible. White, whose public persona traded in velvet romance, slips in a communal politics: this sound comes from a people, not a playlist category. The subtext pushes back against the way Black innovation gets mined, rebranded, and declared “over” once the mainstream has extracted what it wants.

Context matters here: White came up after the first seismic waves of postwar R&B, gospel-infused soul, Motown polish, and the early churn toward disco and funk. By then, critics were already building museums in their heads. His smile isn’t naive; it’s a flex of optimism against cultural gatekeeping. “Possibilities” points to arrangement, production, crossover, and new voices - a future where the genre doesn’t have to ask permission to expand.

Quote Details

TopicMusic
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
White, Barry. (n.d.). We forget that this music, music made by my brothers and sisters, is still a baby. It's just beginning. When I think of the possibilities, it makes me smile. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-forget-that-this-music-music-made-by-my-167020/

Chicago Style
White, Barry. "We forget that this music, music made by my brothers and sisters, is still a baby. It's just beginning. When I think of the possibilities, it makes me smile." FixQuotes. Accessed February 1, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-forget-that-this-music-music-made-by-my-167020/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"We forget that this music, music made by my brothers and sisters, is still a baby. It's just beginning. When I think of the possibilities, it makes me smile." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-forget-that-this-music-music-made-by-my-167020/. Accessed 1 Feb. 2026.

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Music made by my brothers and sisters is still a baby
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About the Author

Barry White

Barry White (September 12, 1944 - July 4, 2003) was a Musician from USA.

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