All-time music great Stevie Wonder declared with absolute resolve that he is moving to Ghana to live out the rest of his days.
The 22-time Grammy-winner said he has grown weary of America’s infuriating and mystifying unwillingness to accept all of its citizens equally.
Wonder, 70, whom most R&B artists and even pop singers revere as a source of inspiration for decades, blew Oprah Winfrey away during a recent episode of “Oprah Conversations” when he said that once he makes that move to the Motherland, he will not be coming back.
“I promise you [America], if you do the right thing, I will give you this song. I will give it to you. You can have it,” he said, according to Hot New Hip Hop. “Because I wanna see this nation smile again. And I want to see it before I leave to travel to move to Ghana, because I’m going to do that.”
Winfrey, 67, seemed to need a second to absorb intellectually what Wonder had just articulated.
“You’re gonna move permanently to Ghana?” the talk show host asked seeking clarity.
“I am,” said the “Higher Ground” singer who first exploded onto the scene in the 1960s with Motown.
“I don’t want to see my children’s, children’s children have to say ‘Oh please like me, please respect me, please know that I am important, please value me.’ What is that?” he asked.
Wonder has been pondering the move to the West African nation for decades. HNHH reports that Wonder vowed to the International Association of African American Music in 1994 that he would eventually settle in Ghana because “there’s more of a sense of community.”
