Ashton Vaughn Charles is a saxophonist-turned-lyricist who is passionate about any and every form of expressive artistry. Ashton is known best for both serenading listeners with soothing and melodic tunes on his sax, as well as shocking them with impressively complex, linguistic, rapid, and aggressive flows on the mic when he recites. He is a member of The Rock/Hip-Hop band “The Color 8.”
Vulnerability is a concept that Ashton practices, constantly, and he encourages others not to let fear keep them from allowing themselves to be loved.
Earlier this year Ashton announced the release of his solo project SKU, an acronym for the phrase “Stop Killing Us.” Ashton’s bold and emotional song and video bring together some of Arizona’s top influencers in the black community to depict their perspective in their own form of creativity on the current state of affairs between cops and the African American unarmed shootings.
Every part of SKU, from its cover art to the numbers, has some form of symbolism and it’s truly amazing.
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There is a unique parallel with the word SKU, which has the official acronym “Stock Keeping Unit,” depicting products in a store. At one point Africans were sold to slave owners as products, and the song’s title is alluding to the fact that now African Americans are still looked at as property or products by the government.
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The artists standing in black lines on the cover art are a symbol as lines on a barcode and the red line represents the barcode being scanned.
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Looking closely, it looks as if the red line was hand-drawn. Which is meant to represent a method of housing discrimination also known as “Redlining.” Redlining is only one single variable in an entire system that is meant to keep certain communities away from acquiring true wealth within their communities.
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The barcode number used (161918652020) is comprised of 3 separate years. Here is the breakdown.
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1619 was the first year African slaves were brought to America.
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1865 was the year that the news of the “abolishment” of slavery (in 1863) FINALLY reached Galveston, Texas.
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2020 is the current year, the year this song was created, and the year that we broke records of recorded protests.
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Different forms of slavery exist in EVERY one of these years.
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The “1” and “9” on the edges represent how many artists are on the project (19).
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The symbol towards the right is Ashton Vaughn Charles logo.
“When the world fails to accurately depict history, it is our duty as artists to use our gifts to share with the world the true nature, and impact, of such historical events. There’s no censoring an artist who knows only to speak the truth.”
-Ashton Vaughn Charles
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