Every February, The Current honors Black History Month. We'll be celebrating by spotlighting black musical artists whose voices and songs changed the world, throughout the decades and across genres. We'll also post a series of essays delving into a deep, enduring and ever-evolving body of work. In this entry, 12 artists talk about the musicians who inspired them and helped shape their sound and vision.

Questlove

[Billboard, 11.15.16]: "A Tribe Called Quest was like nothing I had ever heard. It was stylish, funny, jazzy, soulful, smart and everything else. Tribe was socially conscious without being too self-conscious about it. And the songs: 'Bonita Applebaum,' 'Can I Kick It,' 'Ham N Eggs.' Q-Tip was telling stories and drawing characters with a light touch that went deep, and the samples dug into the most amazing corners of '70s music...Tribe colored outside the lines of traditional funk and soul samples. They made your parents' record collection relevant again. I almost drove out to El Segundo to leave my wallet there as a tribute. In 1990, I was a budding hip-hop artist, but hearing Tribe made everything bloom.

"And then there's the matter of my own name. On our very first album [1993's Organix], I was credited as 'B.R.O. the R.? (Beat Recycler of the Rhythm).' For every reason, that couldn't stand. The Questlove name (or ?uestove if you're feeling punctuational) grew from the seed of A Tribe Called Quest, though I watered it with my own questions about self-knowledge and searching. They helped name me, and now I name them for what they were, are and always will be: one of the brightest constellations in hip-hop's endless sky. They're my Beatles."

Lizzo

[XXL, 12. 2.16]: "In the first half of my life, [I was influenced by] a lot of gospel because I was raised in the ch-o-i-ch, with an o and an i. So I listened to the Winans [CeCe Winans, BeBe Winans] a lot, the Clark Sisters, Fred Hammond and just a lot of whatever my parents said was cool. When I got older and moved to Houston, I started listening to a lot of rap. I love Lil' Flip, he was one of my favorites. Crime Mob and Missy Elliott, obviously was a big, big influence. I listened to a ton of freestyling, the whole SUC Clique like Zero and Trae Tha Truth. Of course, I found the alternative music through my sister. She introduced me to Radiohead and the Mars Volta, just really weird shit. The good s--t, diverse s--t. I'm classically trained, so I listened to a lot of classical music. I never really listened to jazz because a lot of the hip-hop heads listen to jazz. I'm more nerdy and I always listened to the classical music more. I've been compared a lot to Missy Elliott and that is an honor because she's one of my major influences. I would say my style is good music, I make feel-good music even when I'm not trying to. It's a mixture of soul, my gospel roots and it has that hip-hop attitude. It's me refined, a polished me."

Lizzo also credited her adopted hometown in an interview with Vibe [8.18.16]: "Minneapolis will embrace you and all of your weirdness. It will take who you think you are, break it up and make you find a new you — the new creativity in you. I didn't know how to marry the rap side, the gospel side and the weird indie side, and Minneapolis taught me how to do that."

Michael Kiwanuka

[Observer, 11.30.16]: "I was a big fan of Bill Withers. The fact that he was a black guy playing emotional, folk-esque, soul songs was a big influence on me to keep doing the kind of music I was trying to do. At the same time, it's too easy a comparison. It made me want to gain my own sound to the point where people just hear me and no one else."

Kelis

[The First Time: Stories and Songs From Music Icons, 2018]: "I was obsessed with En Vogue. Obsessed! Because they were the first — aside from Whitney Houston — girls who felt like me. There was Brownstone, and SWV and all these chicks who we loved, and I sang 'Weak' till I was weak. I loved them so much, but they didn't look like me. But then came En Vogue, and I was like, 'Oh, be still, my heart! Everything is different now!' They were glamorous, and beautiful, and they were all different. I was like, 'I'm the other girl! I'm the fifth member! I want to be in the group!' That was monumental, because they looked like something else. They looked like I could actually be in the group."

Leon Bridges

[Billboard, 6.26.15]: "Nostalgia for me isn't Sam Cooke, as much as it's listening to a Ginuwine song or hearing Dallas hip-hop and remembering dancing to it in my garage. A friend asked if Sam Cooke was an inspiration. I'd never listened, but I wanted to know my roots, so I looked him up on YouTube and Pandora. Once I heard it, I saw it — that was the music that I wanted to write."

Janelle Monáe

[The Guardian, 2.22.18]: "I wouldn't be as comfortable with who I am if it had not been for Prince. I mean, my label Wondaland would not exist without Paisley Park coming before us...I dedicate a lot of my music to Prince, for everything he's done for music and black people and women and men, for those who have something to say and also at the same time will not allow society to take the dirt off of them. It's about that dirt, and not getting rid of that dirt."

Monáe also cites Lauryn Hill as an early inspiration [bbc.co.uk, 7.2.18]: "I worked at Footlocker and when I got my first check The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill had just come out so I bought two of those CDs. I got two because I had a feeling I would wear out one and I wanted a back-up. [Also] I wanted one for home and one for my mom's car so I had easy access to it. I remember playing the album over and over and over again. I'd do talent showcases singing the title track a cappella and I won three times! Her music, her message, her skin color, her hair...it all meant so much to me growing up. It really did help shape my identity as a young black girl growing-up in the States. She really helped to shape me as an artist."

Kendrick Lamar

[Billboard, 10.5.17]: "Dr. Dre, he's always been there as far as a person of inspiration. I mean, come on, N.W.A — these people we watched on TV all day, every day and wanted to be like, inspired to be like. He looked like us, he looked like my uncles, he looked like my brothers, and just him having that brand in Compton and making it out, that was that influence already there. That's a different type of mentorship....My biggest mistake was watching other artist's success and thinking it could be my own success. Everybody's their own individual and a lot of the times you listen to the radio, and you be pushed by what the industry is doing and what's poppin' at the moment. You go through these stages of trying to figure that out. That hindered me for a long time. The day I changed my name to my actual real name — Kendrick Lamar — and told my true story, that's when I started getting the looks and the ears that I wanted."

SZA

[Refinery29.com, 10,9.13]: "Music was a secondary thing — it was sort of a fluke. I was never really inspired to become a musician, but I was definitely inspired to create art. Most of the people I looked up to weren't your typical artists, like a favorite gymnast, ice-skater, saxophonist, painter, or movie director — I really love Spike Lee. Growing up, my dad only listened to like Coltrane, Miles Davis, Incognito, and Jamiroquai. My personal influences came from dancing with American Ballet Theatre and doing pieces to Bjork." [Gulf Times, 7.4.17]: "I came across Bjork's music by accident. My mother had enrolled me in a gymnastics camp when I was a child. I heard Bjork and rap artists such as Jay-Z, Common, OutKast and Nas on an iPod that one of the other girls had taken to camp. Hearing this stuff changed my life. My parents were strict when it came to music. They limited me to Brazilian jazz, Lauryn Hill, Miles Davis and soul. Lauryn Hill lived on the next street to us in Maplewood, New Jersey. I used to see her all the time at the local Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop. She was this pretty voice and face that my father respected...I have so many different influences. Not just music stars such as Jamiroquai, Billie Holiday, Frank Ocean or Red Hot Chili Peppers but non-musical people such as gymnasts, ice skaters, painters and filmmakers."

Gary Clark Jr.

[Guitar World, 4.9.12]: "My dad had B.B. King and Johnny 'Guitar' Watson records. My mom still had her Jackson 5 records, and I loved Curtis Mayfield. When I got my first guitar I played along with everything I heard that had guitar in it, like the Ramones, Nirvana and Sublime, as well as whatever hip-hop and R&B stuff was on the radio. When I walked down the street in Austin I'd hear jazz, country, emo and hip-hop; it wasn't just blues. I was into the grooves, but I was really into checking out what the guitar players were doing. [Clark got his first guitar when he was 12 and a few months later a friend gave him Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Flood and a Jimi Hendrix compilation.] That just set it off for me. Those records spoke to me in a way I can't describe. When I heard 'Purple Haze' in my headphones, I knew that was my thing. Through Stevie Ray Vaughan I learned about Jimmie Vaughan and other Austin guitarists, like Denny Freeman and Derek O'Brien. When Clifford Antone brought Hubert Sumlin and Buddy Guy to his club [Austin's famed nightclub, Antone's], I'd go see them. I soaked it all up. That was my foundation."

Chance the Rapper

[Complex, 6.23.13]: "Kanye West was just the s--t. I'm a part of the generation that really experienced Kanye as more of an icon and a representative of hip-hop, [rather] than [as] a newcomer. If you're in a different generation, I wouldn't really expect people to understand it, but that's who I grew up listening to. That was what rap was to me. To a lot of people, I think, Kanye came into the game and did a lot of different shit that people weren't used to. And people couldn't really understand it necessarily...Kanye is somebody, to me, that was telling me my story, about how much I hated school, and relating to me even though he was talking about a college experience when I was in fourth grade. The feeling of being rebellious and being different and the fact that it was some s--t that was not allowed in my house made it sacred to me. It was my own CD so it was like I knew Kanye personally. "

Benjamin Booker

[wbur.org, 4.1.15]: "I really don't make the music that I listen to, you know. It's weird because you can tell — I can see parts of things that I've listened to in the music, but I've listened to, I guess, so many different kinds of music that it comes out very differently. Yeah, I listened to a bunch of blues music, but I was also into Sonic Youth, so 'Violent Shiver' — which is one of the songs off the album — I remember wanting a riff like 'Teen Age Riot,' the Sonic Youth song."

Kamasi Washington

[Huck, 6.22.15]: "My biggest musical inspiration is John Coltrane's Transition. When I was really young, like nine years old, my dad tried to get me to listen to this album because it was his favorite too, but I wasn't ready and didn't really get it. I remember when I was about 14 or 15 I had some money and I took the bus to Tower Records in Hollywood to get some CDs. By that time I'd forgotten my dad had played me Transition but I ended up randomly buying it that day. I had my little Discman and decided to listen to this album on the way home. I had everyone on that bus thinking that I was some kind of crazy person because I was literally shouting and crying because the music was so powerful! I got home, ran to show my dad the most amazing album ever and he just laughed. I listened to that album every day for years after that. John Coltrane is like that: he's a beautiful light that if you aren't ready for it will be too bright, but once you're ready you can't stop looking at it!"