"The Fact That One Singer Possessed Such Versatility Is, in No Small Degree, the Crux of His Significance"

"But it also speaks to a long-standing tendency to consider Black music in reductive terms of racial authenticity and obligation, the idea that certain types of artistic and commercial ambition equate to 'selling out' in any number of senses. (Ironically, many of the most vocal proponents of this view have been white.) It's a syllogistic and subtly reactionary view that views Black artistry solely in terms of a narrowly prescribed binary of purity vs. dilution."

Jack Hamilton at Slate criticizes some critics of Sam Cooke.

And Andrew Loog Oldham at Variety remembers Cooke on Cooke's ninetieth birthday.