Listen to Cobi perform live and chat with host Austin Fast in the podcast player above.
Our Bunbury Lounge Acts extravaganza digs into Spotify’s viral list with Minnesota-born singer/songwriter Cobi, whose debut solo single “Don’t You Cry For Me” hit No. 1 last June.
With a bluesy sound and inevitable Hozier comparisons, Cobi croons “Please help me chop this tree down/Or hold me from underneath/Words never once cut me down/Oh don’t you cry for me.”
The emotionally charged black-and-white music video concludes with the hanging of a black man after a white policeman gets shot in a scuffle.
“The song was written around the time when Michael Brown was killed, Baltimore was uprising and people around the country were protesting,” Cobi told Huffington Post. “There’s no denying the epidemic of police shooting unarmed black people. I hate seeing my friends living in fear and just had to speak what was in my heart and say what I felt needed to be said.”
Oscar Wilde thought “life imitates art far more than art imitates life,” but this is a seemingly clear case of the latter. Cobi has said he feels his job as an artist is to reflect the times we are living through.
Cobi followed up with an equally soulful second single “Prophet Story” in January.
Cobi and his crew stopped by the WCPO Lounge after their set at Bunbury and performed some new songs for Lounge Acts.
Watch Cobi perform "Underneath" for WCPO Lounge Acts:
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