Stephen Hill Speaks On The ‘Sauce’ Of Soul Music
Written by h.campbell216 on June 26, 2026
June is Black Music Month, and NewsOne has been celebrating all month long. Stephen Hill, former president of programming for BET, sat down with us to speak on what he believes is the “sauce of soul music.”
“The sauce of soul music is that there’s always love present,” Hill says at the start of the video. As a young man growing up in the ‘70s, when it was still uncommon to see Black faces on TV and in film, soul music provided a much-needed form of representation for Hill. Hill recounts how seeing the Jackson 5 for the first time on TV was an incredibly formative experience for him.
“The Jackson 5 coming along did everything for the mindset of a young Black boy,” Hill explains. “Seeing someone who looked like you, wearing an afro like you, if your mama let you have one, there was nothing better than you.”
The release of James Brown’s “Say It Loud- I’m Black and I’m Proud” was a well-timed rallying cry for Hill growing up. “As a young Black boy, who had gone through his first piece of being followed around in a store by then, when I’m trying to get my Now and Later candies, like, I’m Black and I’m Proud. I’m good,” Hill explains.
Hill goes on to connect the dots between “Say It Loud” and Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright.” Released in 2015, “Alright” became the unofficial anthem of Black Lives Matter protests throughout the late 2010s and the racial uprisings in 2020 in the wake of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd’s deaths at the hands of police.
“It is a human natural desire to put truth in music, especially when you feel like a system is against you,” Hill explains. Later in the video, Hill goes on to recount how N.W.A. stunned America in the early ‘90s simply by telling the truth about inner-city life through their music.
The story of Black people in America has been one of consistently overcoming adversity. While being Black is joyous, dealing with America can be exhausting, and Black music has been an essential tool for navigating American life.
“Music has been a very, very important part of releasing pressure,” Hill explains. “You need something to make you angry; there’s music for that. If you need soothing, there’s music for that. If you need music to describe exactly how you’re feeling in any moment, there’s music for that.”
He ain’t lying. When I want to feel like I could be a main character in any one of the 87 Power shows, I throw on some Clipse. When I need to indulge my inner yearning baddie, SZA’s right there. When I’m a few whiskeys deep and the intrusive thoughts start to win, I pop on “I Thought You Wanted to Dance,” by Tyler, The Creator, and wonder how I let that happen to me.
Black music is everything you could ever need it to be, and that’s why it will always be an essential piece of American life.
“There’s never giving up, you don’t find lots of giving up in Black music,” Hill says in the video. “Because that’s not what we do. We persevere. We keep this sucker going by any means necessary.”
SEE ALSO:
Nina Simone, Sam Cooke, And What Black Artists Sacrificed
Bigger Than The Music: Black Artists Speak Out Against Exploitation
