Some of Robin Thicke’s biggest supporters of his brand of soulful R&B include the likes of Jay-Z, Diddy, Mary J. Blige, Pharrell and Lil Wayne. 

Thicke’s second solo outing, 2006’s The Evolution Of Robin Thicke, earned two BET Awards nominations, yet he took home a Soul Train Award and a VH1 Soul/VIBE Award as breakthrough artist of that year.

Certainly the 31-year-old singer is well aware he stands out as the lone white guy accepting the aforementioned honours. Yet he takes it as something of a barrier-breaking moment on his home turf in the U.S., a country where racial divisions remain fairly high. 

“It doesn’t come out as straight-ahead, blatant negativity; it comes out more in whispers, stereotypes and little asides referring to ‘those people,’ ‘that area,’” Thicke tells Metro. “Some people don’t even know they’re being racist.”

Thicke lyrically addresses this divide on Dreamworld, a track from his just-released third effort, Something Else: “There would be no black and white/the world just treat my wife right/We could down in Mississippi and no one would look at us trice.”

Not surprisingly, Thicke and his actress spouse Paula Patton — the ‘wife’ referred to in Dreamworld — will likely be casting their ballots favouring U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

“He seems to be giving the impression to the rest of the world that as effed up as America has been for the past eight years, it could turn around and actually have its first black president,” Thicke says.

As a child, Thicke — the son of Canadian-born actor Alan Thicke (star of the ’80s sitcom Growing Pains) and singer-actress Gloria Loring (of Days Of Our Lives fame) — took a liking to the R&B and soul records from his mother’s collection, citing Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder as early influences before developing a taste in hip hop later on.

While Thicke pursued a career as a front-and-centre singer, he was behind the scenes writing for a plethora of pop artists, including Christina Aguilera, Mya, Brandy, Michael Jackson, Marc Anthony and Usher (a collaboration with the latter earned Thicke a Grammy Award in 2005).

“If you look at pop artists now, whether it’s Pink, Justin Timberlake, me, Britney Spears, we’re all making forms of hip hop and R&B that’s being translated into pop,” Thicke says. “We’re all inspired by the African-American music of the ’80s and ’90s.

“The guys in Fall Out Boy are big Jay-Z fans; Linkin Park loves Public Enemy and Run-DMC. We’re all getting less and less far apart in that fine line between pop and hip hop.”