Invariably, first one must discuss the matter of the name. The name the Negro Problem is meant ironically, but it's in no way used for simple shock value. Indeed, the name illuminates the entire raison d'être of the band: although artists as disparate as Jimi Hendrix, Love, the Chambers Brothers, and the Fifth Dimension were making psychedelic rock music in the late '60s, a disturbing racial divide has reasserted itself since then. The concept of a supposed stylistic division into "white music" and "black music," a holdover from the first half of the 20th century when records by black artists were shunted over into the "race music" category, has insidiously grown back since the genre-busting, polyglot days of the immediate post-Civil Rights era, into an even stronger and more invisible divide. Once in a blue moon, a Prince or a Lenny Kravitz might gain a foothold in the rock marketplace, but more often, a genre-busting artist like Chocolate Genius or Shuggie Otis remains firmly locked, in the industry view, in the euphemistically-named "urban" marketplace. This is why singer/songwriter Mark Stewart's band is called the Negro Problem, and it's why that is such a brilliant name: how else will the music industry see an otherwise white band fronted by a black man whose primary influences include not only Sly Stone and George Clinton, but also Jimmy Webb, Stephen Sondheim, Burt Bacharach, Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson, and Paul McCartney, except as a problem?