- Mayer Hawthorne
Soul music has always been an important strand of hip-hop’s DNA, and for many years now the two genres have frequently been indistinguishable. It’s not just hip-hop transforming the sound of soul, either—rappers and soul singers appear on one another’s tracks. And 30-year-old Mayer Hawthorne (ne Andrew Mayer Cohen), raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, grew up as a hip-hop kid but also absorbed the ubiquitous strains of Motown.