Blues is a genre and musical form, grown out of spirituals and work songs by African Americans, in the so-called “Cotton States” of the US in the late 1800s. Historically, Rhythm and Blues is an eminently Afro-American popular music genre combining jazz, gospel, and blues influences. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is “music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying.”

Just as Eminem (whose real name is Marshall Bruce Mathers III) has broken into hip hop – a musical genre predominantly associated with black culture – reaching such heights as to be nicknamed by Rolling Stone the “King of Hip Hop,” so too Zucchero (whose real name is Adelmo Fornaciari) broke into the above defined, blues, rhythm and blues, soul – musical expressions of the African-Americans – reinventing those in a fresh “Mediterranean” blend.