Amber Mark - My People (Eddie Kendricks Cover) [Video]

Singer, songwriter and producer Amber Mark delivers a beautiful rendition of Eddie Kendricks track ‘My People...Hold On,’ taken from the former Temptations vocalist’s same titled album, released in 1972. Mark originally covered the track last year for the Governor’s Ball in New York, in which her choreographer created a contemporary dance piece to accompany the performance of the song during the show. Bringing it back to life for the purpose of our current times, Mark reignites the message of this great song, with a self directed and produced visual dance performance.

The singer shares the video with an extremely heartfelt message and call for support and unity with the black community:

“Last year I covered ‘My People...Hold On’ by Eddie Kendricks at Governor's Ball in New York, and my choreographer created a beautiful dance to it for the show. Never thought it would emotionally come back around to me like this.

It’s a crazy world we’re living in and my people have been suffering the most, leaving me with tears in my eyes & so many questions that have been keeping me up at night for weeks. I personally always seek answers to the unknown through science as scientific evidence cannot be argued against. In the past I’ve looked to science and found god. I found that science and spirituality are more connected then one would think if not the same thing just expressed differently.

In a time like this when people including myself are waking up, I’ve once again looked to science in finding the answer as to why throughout most of humanity we have wasted so much time judging others merely for their skin tone or their hair texture. And while I did not find an answer I found scientific evidence that proves just how illogical racism is. It has been scientifically proven we ALL come from Africa. All DNA has traced back to one woman, the mitochondrial Eve, in Africa between 100,000 -200,000 years ago. The variety in skin tone and hair texture within the human race is the result of evolutionary traits due to migration. Darker skin or lighter skin is the human race adapting to the amount of UV light emitted within certain parts of the world. The genetic similarity between a white man in Sweden and a black woman in Nigeria (human to human) is 99.9%. Why are we wasting time giving hate towards others because they look .1% different. It logically doesn’t make sense, but our obsession with power and greed has possessed & corrupted the human race. It has created war after war and hurt so many in the process for absolutely nothing.

I’m aware that a positive cannot exist without a negative. If you look inside of an atom it’s essentially made up of two opposing forces. There is both a positive charge and a negative and with the neutral charge they keep the atom as a whole in balance. Think about how mind blowingly spiritual that is.

I say this to point out how much we need the negativity of this world to be exposed because right now humanity is imbalanced. The good, the love, and the light on this little blue dot that we call earth is lacking and the planet as a whole is greatly effected.

It’s so amazing to see the world learning, growing and most importantly helping one another. We cannot let go of this feeling or this moment. We should use this positive mentality as the everlasting force driving humankind as a whole to greatness not just for the future of yourself but for the future of everyone around you.

This cover and really any song I’ve made is dedicated to all of the people doing this. We have had enough, it’s time to bring more positive force into this world... To all the people speaking out on behalf of purely loving one another no matter the minuscule .1% differences in our DNA. Hold on to that love and know YOU, no matter where your homo sapiens ancestors migrated to, are and always will be MY people.

100% of profits made from My people’ will go to an organization that develops black agricultural land ownership. In my opinion what we need as a human race to truly thrive is good quality education and good quality land & food. The only way we can accomplish such is by giving our black communities access to land and the tools to use it.”

Check out the video for Amber Mark’s ‘My People’ below and you can also stream the track on Spotify.

Director - Amber Mark

Producer - Amber Mark

DP - Amber Mark

Editor - Satya Zoa

Choreographer - Morgan Marie Grayned

Dancers - Zenia Mason | Maati Angaza | Cassandra Toussaint | Briana Gobourne

Stylist - Amber Mark