But Gary Clark Jr pauses before every answer he gives. I ask him why he pauses as we share a couch in the dimly lit wood-paneled artist lounge at Warner Bros. Records in the green suburbs of Los Angeles. He responds, with a glimmer of a smirk, “I want to make sure I’m answering these questions right.” And if he doesn’t know an answer to something, he simply—and humbly—says, “I don’t know.”

Clark first picked up a guitar at age 12 and began performing throughout his native Austin, Texas during his teenage years. Now 35 years old, he is a specific kind of cool—the kind you can’t teach. The kind, no matter how much you spend and no matter who you enlist, you cannot emulate—even if he gave you the actual shirt off his back. Sure, plenty of men can wear wide brim hats, square-toed boots, skinny jeans and a tattered vintage T-shirt (a look he playfully describes as “Salvation Armani”) but not many can pull it off without making it look like a costume that GQ instructed.

Clark maintains confident eye contact throughout our conversation. There is no machismo. He’s the kind, I imagine, who isn’t afraid to ask for directions when he’s lost. Sure, Clark has been plenty successful up to this point. He’s performed on the Grammy stage multiple times, and he’s earned the praise of Alicia Keyes, Eric Clapton and the late Prince. He calls international supermodel Nicole Trunfio wife, owns a sprawling 50-acre ranch in his southern hometown, and he’s just welcomed his second child. The point is: He could keep doing what's he's been doing since he was a kid and his fleet of hyper local, ultra-cool fans would keep filling up venues to listen.

And still, his new album, This Land (out now), showcases the room he has left for evolution; a key ingredient to a long-lasting career in the spotlight. The album sounds like his previous work in that the guitar is the star and the lyrics are a close second. Like his in-person demeanor, a calm self-assuredness threads each verse together. What’s different, however, is his use of technological innovations that have made electronic dance music climb to the top of the charts. “I always said that I was going to do whatever I want, but I have to admit I didn’t want to alienate the audience. But when I was at home, I was making all kinds of noise with synths. I just decided to do it. This time, I did what I felt instead of what I thought was balancing the line.”

Whereas his previous album, The Story of Sonny Boy Slim instigates a head bob, This Land forces me to thrash every so often. On his last studio release, he also had yet to be a father “I had a lot of conversations with my producer slash engineer Jacob Sciba,” he reveals. “Before the little ones, it was just about us and our selfish wants and needs. When you look at these little people who are looking to you for survival, it caused me to think different, like, what are we doing?” On the song, “Feed the Babies” he muses on this very question. His answer? No matter what mistakes we make—no matter who we elect into office or how divided we become—it should be about the children. No longer commanded by any perception of what modern blues should be, Clark lets loose on the guitar with the chorus, “Come on mothers and fathers/ Stand up for your cause/ Teach the babies to love.”

While each song makes a familiar sound of the past new again—with inspiration most evident from Curtis Mayfield and Quincy Jones—the public’s fixation seems to lay with the furious and all-his-own titular song where rock and blues connect by way of synths. This is where he speaks purely from personal experience about purchasing land right in the “middle of Trump country”. He retells the story about a man, who he refers to as Mr. Williams, who told him he—and his present toddler son—didn’t belong.

Clark already told this story in his lyrics, and while I’m sure he's gone over this incident again and again in the weeks leading up to the album’s release, I have to mention how affecting it sounded when I first heard the song—and then heard it again on Saturday Night Live national stage last month. We begin talking about the complimentary, albeit controversial, music video directed by Savannah Leaf. The six minutes of visual storytelling sees black children stepping on confederate flags and running through the Texas fields as he strums from his home’s porch above, then peaks with the burning of the American flag. “Somebody wrote me a note and was, like, ‘I’m done with you and this message is hateful and you’re feeding into the hate’ and I didn’t mean to offend.” Instead, he was inspired by his childhood, when his neighbors waved the confederate flag in his face. Fast forward 30 years, and he's witnessing the same hatred—both across the world and in his own backyard. “Everyone is fighting for the right to be who they are. I feel like we all kind of want the same thing, and we’re trying to like push each other aside to get to the finish line first, whatever that is,” he explains. “At the end of the day, I don’t know if what we’re chasing is worth it, to see people’s lives be shattered, and families broken apart."

His eyes fill with held back tears. His voice cracks. “We’ve got to just teach people to love each other, and I’m—for my kid to, like, look at me, like, all confused and scared like ‘What’s happening?’ That’s my son.” He begins gesticulating for the first time, hand to chest, “My son.”